ARRC JOURNAL
BIAS – HOW CAN IT AFFECT
INTELLIGENCE SUPPORT TO
DECISION-MAKING?
Maj Jim Buchan (GBR-A)
“We had to arrange their minds in order of battle, just as carefully and as formally as
other officers arranged their bodies; and not only our own men’s minds, though them
first; the minds of the enemy, so far as we could reach them; and thirdly, the mind of
the nation supporting us from behind the firing line, and the mind of the hostile nation
waiting the verdict, and the neutrals looking on.” TE Lawrence
As the character of war has become ever
more complex and dynamic, there is now
just as much a requirement for ‘brains’
as there is ‘brawn’. The technological
capabilities that our adversaries now
possess mean that NATO is no longer in
a position where its equipment superiority
can be guaranteed. In an operating
environment characterised by volatility,
uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity 1 ,
greater understanding provides a greater
chance of success.
Experience has shown that we can
expect to operate within congested
urban and littoral environments that
will be cluttered, making it difficult to
distinguish individuals, items or events.
These environments will be contested,
as land mobility, littoral and air access,
and our use of cyberspace is challenged
by rapid technological innovation and
proliferation. The battlespace will
be connected, with activity being
increasingly
vulnerable
to
attack
and exploitation, and our operations
will continue to be constrained by
Western legal and societal norms that
are unlikely to constrain the actions of
our adversaries. 2 As such, we need to
understand a much broader audience
than just our adversaries alone.
The level of understanding required in a
complex and dynamic
environment presents a
problem for intelligence
analysts due to the
seemingly
infinite
amount of information
that will have to be
processed and analysed
by a finite resource.
Judgement
provides
a useful shortcut and
is an analyst’s ally; it
allows them to provide
an assessment based
on past experience,
Dr Paul Latawaski sets the historical context for the region
1 Heuristics and Biases in Military Decision Making, Major Blair S. Williams, U.S. Army, 2010
2 Future Character of Conflict, DCDC, UK MOD, 2010
3 Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, 2011
58
ALLIED RAPID REACTION CORPS
historical trends or even just a ‘gut
feeling’. Whilst it is entirely appropriate
to do so, it must be recognised that
this can make it easy to create, sustain
and project biases that misinform the
decision-making process.
The work of Daniel Kahneman, Nobel
Laureate and Professor Amos Tversky
helps to explain this. They proposed that
when facing an overwhelming amount
of information, human beings reduce
complexity by using their own judgement.
Over a period of time, we inject cognitive
bias into our decision-making from the
unconscious errors that are generated by
this mental simplification. Our decisions
are not perfectly rational; mistakes are
not only common but also completely
predictable. 3
One of Kahneman and Tversky key
concepts was that of ‘availability bias’.
The easier it is for us to recall instances
of something happening, the more likely
we will assess it is to happen again. For
instance, assessing that an event will
occur because historically it has occurred
70 percent of the time, is a sensible
approach for an analyst. If however,
the same assessment is introduced
repeatedly, we risk ignoring the 30
percent of other possibilities. Since it is