Think Tank Meeting 1 Dec 2005

Minutes of Think Tank meeting 1 Dec 2005:


1. Meet and Greet


2. Members in Attendance:

a. Prof Robert Hoff, Director of Mercyhurst Psych Dept
b. Halen Allison, Student Director of Research, Intel Studies Dept
c. Lance Ramsey, Intel Studies Dept
e. Mark Blair, Intel Studies Dept


3. Discussion of each member’s understandings and desires of the out come of the think tank. Responses as follows:

a. Investigation of the utilities of psychological principals to intelligence analysis.
b. Advancement of individual knowledge and the enhancement of analytical abilities.
c. Advancement of the craft of intelligence itself.
d. Identification and/or formulation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), to assess productions of intelligence, both retrospectively, and inclusive in the intelligence process.
e. Formulate a curriculum to enhance the Mercyhurst Intelligence Studies Program.
f. Enhance/Develop interoperability and academic cooperation between the Intelligence Studies Dept and the Psychology Dept.


4. Video: “Judgment and Decision Making”, available at Learner.org (http://learner.org/resources/series138.html program 11) The program provided an overview of several psychology principals of judgment and decision making. Discussion points are as follows:

a. Normative vs. Descriptive decision-making: How decisions ought to be made vs. how decisions are made. Intuitions may sometimes be correct yet they are often intrinsically wrong in their logic.
b. Available Heuristic: The principal that people make decisions based on readily available knowledge.
c. Reasoning by Representativeness or Similarity: When presented with a questions of probability people search for evidence in the question and try to match it with a similar answer. People are often more likely to give a more specific response that fits a stereotype ignoring a broader answer, which by nature is more probable.
d. Anchoring Effect: The principal that the question is posed with a parameter tends to “anchor” an estimative response. Responses, in general, will be pulled toward the parameter.
e. Risk Strategies: People are predictable when making choices which similar values. A person will favor a “sure thing” over a gamble if the outcome is a gain. A person will generally favor a gamble over a sure thing if the outcome is a loss.
f. Under certain knowable conditions intuitions should not be trusted; people are susceptible to predictable errors in decision-making. Knowing these predictable errors give us hope that we may be able to implement procedures to avoid these errors in decision making or at least identify situations in which a person is at risk of making these errors.
g. Groupthink: A condition in which like-minded people continually to reduce the lateral thought. This intellectual inbreeding produces very narrow and often unchallenged viewpoints.
h. Mind-guarding: Members of groupthink protect the status quo from any evidence to the contrary.
i. Devils Advocates and Dissenters: These two concepts are identified as effective tools to combat groupthink and mind-guarding.


5. The group then held a discussion on the points defined by the video.

a. The analysts were quick to point out that the craft of intelligence analysis is only concerned with descriptive assessments. And that any normative issues are only discussed is when giving descriptive analysis a query’s normative tendencies (i.e. cultural norms/ideology). Proper analysis absolves itself of the moral question and only describes what is evident.
b. The analysts also agreed that all of the predictable decision-making errors defined by the video could be found in the practice of analysis. The point was also made that rank and/or authority exacerbates these issues. Furthermore, that “experts” can often present such errors that go unopposed.
c. Reasoning by Representativeness or Similarity: Experts or high ranking members who are familiar with many similar requests for information (RFIs) or critical intelligence requirements (CIRs), may have developed a stereo-type of a culture of people, or a doctrine of a military force. Such expertise, while necessary and often provides extremely insightful analysis, may also run the risk of making decision-making errors. The analysts stated that these “experts” should play a supporting role for the analyst, and the analyst should be charged with making a sober analysis based on expert opinions, empirical evidence, and situational concerns.
d. Question from Professor Hoff: “Do any of you think there could have been instances of groupthink in the Bush administration in the question of WMDs in regards to the Iraq War?” Response: (Mark Blair): Of course. It is almost unavoidable. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we can identify where and if the analytical process broke down. In fact the question, CIR, or RFI may be more at fault than the response from analysts. If the question, “Where are the WMDs?” is asked, a response of, “There are no WMDs” does not answer the RFI. Since I don’t know how the question was asked I cannot be sure if this is the case. The Bush administration does have divergence of opinion. The members who did not serve in Vietnam (Bush, Cheney, etc.) tend to be the “warhawks”; while the Vietnam vets (Powell, Armitage, etc.) tend to be more reluctant to go to war. So there is some dissention about policy in the Bush administration, which would combat groupthink; however there is an overall aire of American exceptionalism and a neo-manifest destiny feel to the Bush administration. Over all the think tank analysts agree that there was likely much pressure from above to come up with an analysis based on preconceived notions.
e. Review of Material for Next Meeting: The think tank then concluded they would review “Watchin’ the Analyst” by Ross Stapleton-Gray for next weeks meeting.