Course Level: Beginner
Format Requirements: The course consists of interactive lectures, using power point slides and handouts to consult for further information. Case examples and thinking problems will illustrate psychological processes and phenomena which can either help or hurt clinician and patient decision making. In small groups, the class will discuss issues of appropriate methodology for studying intuition and deliberation in medical decision making, psychological processes and phenomena which may affect the quality of such decisions, as well as other questions relevant to intuition and deliberation in medical diagnosis and patient decision making that may come up. There are no prerequisites for the course. The intended audience includes researchers and practitioners interested in the role of intuition and deliberation in medical decision making.
Background: This course addresses the role of intuition and deliberation in medical decision making in both physician decisions (diagnosis) and patient decision making (treatment or screening decisions). Psychology has a long tradition of studying the role of “feeling and thinking” in decision making, focusing on factors which make people either use their intuition, or be more deliberative, and on the impact of these thought modes on decision outcomes, including decision quality. Some psychological research has shown that intuitions (heuristic judgments and gut feelings) are biased. Other research has shown that even conscious, analytical thought can fail us. What do these findings mean for medical decision making? How can we identify biases when they occur, and correct them? This course will provide attendees with an understanding and appreciation of key findings in the psychology of intuition and deliberation in decision making, and of their value and limits in medical decision making.
Description and Objectives: Attendees are provided with an overview of classic and recent findings in the psychology of intuition and deliberation in judgment and decision making. Attendees learn how to critically interpret the potential use as well as limits of these findings in the medical domain: To what extend can these findings be translated to physician and patient decision making? What kind of shortcomings do people show in decision tasks? Attention to shortcomings can alert us to common pitfalls in both intuitive and deliberative decision making. It also helps us to understand how the human mind works and to come up with strategies to improve decision making. Attendees discuss how the presented research findings may be used to improve diagnostic performance by clinicians or decision aid techniques for patients. Moreover, they will learn how to judge the suitability and quality of research methods to study intuition and deliberation in medical decision making, will generate new research questions and hypotheses in this domain, and get some hands-on experience in designing studies to empirically test these hypotheses.
The key objectives of this course are to:
- (A) provide attendees with an understanding and appreciation of key findings in psychology regarding the role of intuition and deliberation in decision making;
- (B) provide attendees with an understanding and ability to judge the suitability of research methods for studying intuition and deliberation in decision making;
- (C) enable attendees to think of potential ways to improve medical decisions based on psychological evidence regarding the role of intuition and deliberation in decision making;
- (D) enable attendees to generate new research questions and hypotheses in this domain, and to design studies to empirically test these hypotheses.