Many findings in cognitive psychology suggest that many decisions and judgments rely on processes that are unconscious, that these processes can be disrupted by conscious input, leading to poor decision making. A commonly paradigm has shown that decision makers who are distracted while deciding make better to make quick decisions. The distraction is thought to facilitate spontaneous unconscious processing, called the “deliberation without attention effect”, that lead to better decisions when the question is later revisited. This effect was tested in three studies on diagnostic judgments in a multiple cue probability learning paradigm. In three studies, the effect of rushed decision making, forced deliberation, and distraction were tested on probability judgments, and on choices and confidence judgments. Evidence suggested that subjects in the immediate decision were less accurate than the other conditions, in decisions and judgments, despite higher levels of confidence, but equaled performance in other conditions when given make-work tasks in between decisions, which may have primed more careful or more deliberate thinking. The results did not make any strong theoretical implications for the deliberation without attention effect.

Many findings in cognitive psychology suggest that many decisions and judgments rely on processes that are unconscious, that these processes can be disrupted by conscious input, leading to poor decision making. A commonly paradigm has shown that decision makers who are distracted while deciding make better to make quick decisions. The distraction is thought to facilitate spontaneous unconscious processing, called the “deliberation without attention effect”, that lead to better decisions when the question is later revisited. This effect was tested in three studies on diagnostic judgments in a multiple cue probability learning paradigm. In three studies, the effect of rushed decision making, forced deliberation, and distraction were tested on probability judgments, and on choices and confidence judgments. Evidence suggested that subjects in the immediate decision were less accurate than the other conditions, in decisions and judgments, despite higher levels of confidence, but equaled performance in other conditions when given make-work tasks in between decisions, which may have primed more careful or more deliberate thinking. The results did not make any strong theoretical implications for the deliberation without attention effect.

This qualitative study was aimed at developing an understanding of how persons involved in the investigation or deliberation of child abuse and neglect cases think and feel about the process of weighing evidence and drawing conclusions from it. Twenty investigators, supervisors, and administrators employed by the Child Protective Services agency in Texas were asked to describe cases they had investigated or reviewed that had been particularly difficult because of conflicting or ambiguous evidence. They were also asked opinion questions about the agency's actuarial risk assessment instrument and the concept of preponderance of evidence. Finally, participants were asked to respond to two short case vignettes describing allegations of sexual abuse. Constant comparative and narrative analysis of interview data revealed that the process of case deliberation in CPS makes use of both intuitive and analytic decision-making styles, and there is a general movement from intuition to analysis as a case ascends the decision-making hierarchy. This movement entails a shift from narrative forms of thought and an outcome-oriented ethic to analytic forms of thought and a rule-based ethic. Though intuitive decision making is at least partly guided from personal experience and personal values, and does produce error because of that, it is nonetheless a form of rationality as capable of being guided by scrupulousness and fidelity to truth as analysis is. The personal value and outcome-oriented ethic that intuition brings to the decision making process not only cannot be eliminated, it is necessary to the program's achievement of its mission. It is recommended that the training of new investigators should, first, acknowledge the large role that intuitive thinking plays in CPS decision making and, second, develop ways to help decision makers discipline intuition, in the words of one participant, and to create conditions that foster its optimal functioning.

This qualitative study was aimed at developing an understanding of how persons involved in the investigation or deliberation of child abuse and neglect cases think and feel about the process of weighing evidence and drawing conclusions from it. Twenty investigators, supervisors, and administrators employed by the Child Protective Services agency in Texas were asked to describe cases they had investigated or reviewed that had been particularly difficult because of conflicting or ambiguous evidence. They were also asked opinion questions about the agency's actuarial risk assessment instrument and the concept of preponderance of evidence. Finally, participants were asked to respond to two short case vignettes describing allegations of sexual abuse. Constant comparative and narrative analysis of interview data revealed that the process of case deliberation in CPS makes use of both intuitive and analytic decision-making styles, and there is a general movement from intuition to analysis as a case ascends the decision-making hierarchy. This movement entails a shift from narrative forms of thought and an outcome-oriented ethic to analytic forms of thought and a rule-based ethic. Though intuitive decision making is at least partly guided from personal experience and personal values, and does produce error because of that, it is nonetheless a form of rationality as capable of being guided by scrupulousness and fidelity to truth as analysis is. The personal value and outcome-oriented ethic that intuition brings to the decision making process not only cannot be eliminated, it is necessary to the program's achievement of its mission. It is recommended that the training of new investigators should, first, acknowledge the large role that intuitive thinking plays in CPS decision making and, second, develop ways to help decision makers discipline intuition, in the words of one participant, and to create conditions that foster its optimal functioning.

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