Imagine There Was No Naturalistic Decision-Making Movement

The Naturalistic Decision-Making movement just celebrated its 40th anniversary at the 18th NDM meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June 2026.

Afterwards I ran a counterfactual exercise with some colleagues to capture what the Naturalistic Decision-Making (NDM) movement has contributed to the field of psychology. The exercise was valuable for highlighting the value added of NDM. It was also valuable as a tactic for using counterfactuals.

Here is a partial list of what we came up with:

Balkanization. Practitioners in various fields would develop their own naturalistic models of decision-making.
Gap. There would be a larger gap between work as imagined vs. work as done. And there would be less support for looking at work as it is actually done.
Fatalities. According to what we have heard from first responders and related professionals such as emergency department physicians, without NDM there would be more fatalities in high-risk domains such as firefighting and healthcare.
Expertise. Our understanding of expertise would be severely limited; experts would be disrespected.
The cognitive dimension. There would be less familiarity with the cognitive dimension in the practitioner communities. Tactics in these fields would be more focused on procedures, as opposed to the cognitive dimension.
Doctrine regarding military decision making. Without NDM, the military decision-making process in the Army (Military Decision Making Process) would likely still be in effect, without any consideration for expertise-based rapid decisions.
Research methods. The academic-led embargo on field research would be in force. Laboratory-oriented traditions would hold sway, making it difficult for researchers to break free from the rigid experimental approaches. As a result, there would be a lack of methods for examining sense-making and decision making in naturalistic settings (e.g., using cognitive task analysis).
Training and design. We would not have a great understanding of how to train tacit knowledge or design systems to support it. Our limited understanding of what expertise truly is would inhibit our interventions. There would be fewer scenario/simulation-based training opportunities.
Discoveries. There would have been fewer discoveries of macrocognitive phenomena such as sense-making, problem detection, and insight.

So, it’s a pretty grim picture, if our counterfactual exercise is to be believed. This exercise has helped us appreciate what the NDM community has contributed to our research and our training and design approaches.

I thank the following colleagues who contributed their ideas: Robert Hoffman, Joseph Borders, John Schmitt, Emily Newsome, Jared Peterson, Katrina Carlson, Kari Hoy, Micah Condon and Laura Militello.