The Basis of Knowledge Intervention: A Method for Improving Mental Models
In this paper mental model, which plays an important role in decision making, is referred to some deeply held assumptions and belief systems that enable individuals to make inferences and predictions. Its the basis for an individual to make decision. Bad or outdated mental models will lead to decision failures. Psychologists have revealed us some decision behaviors that deviate from rationality, such as heuristic-driven bias, representative bias, anchoring effect, herd effect, framing dependence and so on. Such biases reflect human beings weaknesses in decision making and mental models. They are also the barriers for decision innovation. The aim of this paper is to remove those barriers or at least reduce the influences of them by introducing knowledge intervention, and hence improve decision makers mental models. Knowledge is a critical factor that influences ones mental models. An individual has a hierarchical knowledge system. Knowledge at the inner layer is inherent knowledge which is determined by genes, not by learning. Such knowledge is very stable. Knowledge at the second layer is tacit knowledge which comes into being through long time face-to-face learning, including tradition, custom, culture, etc. Tacit knowledge, which is difficult to be articulated and embedded in the brains of individuals, is stable and not easy to be changed. Knowledge at the outer layer is explicit knowledge which can be described by words and languages. Such knowledge is relatively unstable and can be changed by rational learning. Knowledge at the above three layers and their interactions determine an individuals decision behaviors. Then how does knowledge influence ones decision behaviors? We conducted an experiment focusing on knowledges impact on decision weighting function. The result shows that knowledge change causes the shape change of decision weighting function.The experiment proves that after explicit learning decision behaviors can be changed to a certain degree. Thus ones mental model varied accordingly. Based on the above analysis, we introduce knowledge intervention method to overcome decision makers inherent weaknesses and then improve his mental model. Knowledge intervention method aims at promoting decision makers cognitive ability, enhancing their comprehension to have a better understanding of the decision context. And a better mental model can be achieved.
Knowledge Mental Model Decision Making Explicit Learning
ZHONG Yinghong
School of Economics and Management, Guangdong University of Technology Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, P. R. China
国际会议
The Fifth InternationalSymposium on Management of Technology(ISMOT07)(第五届技术与创新管理国际研讨会)
杭州
英文
1365-1369
2007-06-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）