Decision making with conflicting information: influencing factors and best practice guidelines

Meta‐informational cue inconsistency and judgment of information accuracy: Spotlight on intelligence analysis

“…Halpin et al (1978) suggest that practitioners routinely draw on these ratings when collating information from multiple sources and when tasking collection assets. These findings cohere with literature showing that when confronted with conflicting information, metainformation such as source reliability significantly influences decision-making (Carroll & Sanchez, 2021).…”

An Examination of Pilot-Reported Trust and Response to Information Conflicts Experienced on the Flight Deck

“…With respect to our third research question, the reasons pilots reported for trusting and acting on an information source were consistent with our framework of factors that influence decision-making with conflicting information (Carroll & Sanchez, 2020). The three reasons participants most frequently reported for trusting a source in this study were (1) accuracy, (2) reliability, and (3) recency of the information source.…”

“…Consistent with Carroll and Sanchez’s (2020) framework, these findings suggest there are numerous factors that influence how a pilot will respond to information conflicts on the flight deck, and as a result, several mitigations can be put in place to better support the pilots in these situations. First, if pilots are provided with redundant sources of information, they need to be trained regarding how each system works, the system strengths and weaknesses, and in which situations one is more trustworthy than the other.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to build on the interview findings, with a larger sample of pilots, in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the type of information conflicts being experienced on the flight deck, and to further validate the Carroll and Sanchez (2020) framework. Our research questions included:…”

“…Decision-making with conflicting information is also influenced by: (a) time pressure, which leads to significantly less effective decision-making (Chen & Li, 2015); (b) risk, which individuals act to minimize (Pritchett et al, 2012); and (c) the type of information conflict (e.g., information missing, ambiguous or directly in conflict; Chen & Li, 2015). Prior to this study, and on the basis of extant research, we developed a framework of factors shown to influence decision-making with conflicting information including: (a) system factors of reliability, transparency, and workload; (b) individual factors of experience, system trust, and training; and (c) task/environment factors of time pressure, risk, take-action tendency, type of conflict, and task difficulty (see Carroll & Sanchez, 2020 for details).…”