The Decision Sciences Lab is focused on three primary areas of research and scholarship:

1. Decision Quality
   • The measure of whether decisions achieve the desired future outcomes
2. Risk, Security, and Intelligence
   • How intelligence minimizes decision risk by mitigating future uncertainty and reducing subjectivity
   • How security concerns influence and are influenced by decision paradigms
3. Leadership
   • Leadership-as-practice that focuses on the choices leaders make to achieve distinctive future outcomes rather than individual traits or behaviors

Each of these areas utilizes aspects of both cognitive psychology and analytical skillsets. In the areas of Risk, Security, and Intelligence, we research both the cognitive aspects of intelligence gathering and analysis as well as practical components of how intelligence is utilized as a risk management tool by senior executives as well as senior leaders in the Intelligence Community (IC). With leadership, the lab’s research efforts bring together cross-disciplinary scholar-practitioners from industry, academia, and government to inform best-practices in leadership practices and the development of individuals as leaders. The leadership component also has a professional and executive development aspect to bring research and practice to companies and government entities wanting to develop leaders that can break the constraints of bounded rationality and lead to achieve desired organizational outcomes. The third main thrust of the lab is in decision quality. In this area we work on both cognitive aspects of decision making, to focus on creativity, generating larger sets of decision options, using structured analytic techniques, and exploring the role of AI and ML in improving decision quality.

Underlying these three main areas are ongoing work in both courage and forensic psychology.

Research areas:

• Decision making

• Leadership

• Risk/Intelligence

• Organizations and Culture

• Courage

• Forensic Psychology

• Security Studies