Impact of intelligent decision aids on expert and novice decision‐makers’ judgments

Abstract

Businesses have invested tremendous resources into intelligent decision aid development. A good match between user and aid may improve the expert decision-maker's decision quality. However, novices may be prone to poorer decision-making if intelligent decision aids are more expert than the user. The present paper provides an empirical test of the impact of decision aids on subjects with differential expertise levels. The results support the contention that intelligent decision aids aggravate bias in novices' decision-making but mitigate bias in experts' decision-making processes. Intelligent decision aids may be best viewed as complements to expert decision-makers during complex problem analysis and resolution. Copyright 2004 Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand.

Are Within-Subjects Designs "Transparent"?

“…Testing how recall (Borgida & DeBono, 1989) or the impact of decisions aids or certain biases (Arnold, Collier, Leech & Sutton, 2004) differ between experts and novices requires a between-subjects design. Mental contamination studies (see Wilson & Brekke, 1994) often require a between-subjects design, as do studies where certain emotional states must be induced, such as some misattribution studies (e.g., Schachter & Singer, 1962).…”

Organizational Reasons For Decision Aid Implementation

“…Arnold et al (2004) propose that a decision aid has the potential to serve users by acting as an "electronic colleague" (p.23) throughout the decision-making process. Decision aids can augment professional judgment by providing a decision maker with a "second" opinion for comparative purposes and supporting "what if" analyses (Elliott and Kielich 1985; Abdolmohammadi and Usoff 2001).…”

“…Organizations invest substantial resources in decision technology, so failure of the technology to meet expectations can be costly. As a result, significant effort within academic research has been devoted to the investigation of decision aid success and failure (Silver 1990; Whitecotton 1996; Brown and Jones 1998; Arnold et al 2004). However, the findings of this body of work have not been complete because research has been less diligent in the exploration of the relationship between decision aid technologies and organizational factors.…”

Towards Designing an Assistant for Semi-Automatic EMS Dispatching

“…We summarize all these systems that aim to support users' decision-making under the term 'decision aids' for brevity, acknowledging that these are actually all distinct research streams. Decision aids integrate the expertise of one or more experts in a given decision domain and intended to provide a specific recommendation to a given problem and/or provide expert advice that assists the user in making a better decision than when unaided [6].…”