Originally published: . Volume 8, No. 7. Source pages: 11.
Although retired from the LSU Management Department in 2010, Dr. Courtland Chaney keeps returning to the classroom. He recently spoke to Dr. Robert Mathew’s upper-division psychology class, Psychology of Thinking and Decision Making (Psychology 4030), at LSU and shared some of his ideas about the complex terrain of human judgment.
Chaney is a licensed industrial-organizational psychologist and served as an instructor in the Department of Management at Louisiana State University for almost 30 years. He designed and conducted supervisory and management training and has worked as a consultant in the fields of I-O psychology, organizational development, and human resource management.
Dr. Chaney told the group that, while his interest in human behavior and thinking could be traced back to the first psychology courses he took as an undergraduate student in the early 1970s, it was his experience teaching “Disaster and Crisis Management” at LSU just before his LSU retirement that really prompted him to reflect deeply about how people respond to crises and thus how we make decisions to take or refrain from action, he said.
Since any number of responses to a given situation are possible, the individual must consider multiple options (including doing nothing), predict the likely outcome of each response option, and decide which response is the preferred action, Chaney told the group.
“A sobering aspect of evaluating response options and taking action is the realization that this entire sequence sometimes occurs under duress and in a matter of seconds,” he explained, as is the case with a police officer responding to a threatening incident, a driver trying to regain control of a vehicle spinning on an icy road, or any other rapidly evolving situation, he said.
In his conclusions, he suggested the students work to become aware of their environment and attentive to surroundings. “Become cognizant of your behavioral propensities,” and acknowledge to yourself that your interpretation is just that, an interpretation–– even a hypothesis––about your perception.
“Then, by deliberately attending to the thought processes cited, you will improve both thinking and decision making,” concluded Chaney.
Dr. Robert Mathews, cognitive psychologist and retired professor, has researched some of these problems from a cognitive psychology perspective. “We do have two minds,” referring to findings that there are two mental systems, with different operating rules, involved in human learning and decision-making, he previously told the Times.
“The trick is in getting the two to work together effectively to maximize good decisions.” His previous work at LSU’s Office of Applied Cognition has been applicable to real work performance of almost any task or job, from surgeons to truck drivers, chemical plant operators to accountants.
Dr. Courtland Chaney speaking to Dr. Robert Mathews’ seniors in his Psychology of Thinking and Decision Making class at the LSU Psychology. Chaney spoke on “Thinking about Thinking.” (Photo by Bob Mathews)
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