The Center for the Acceleration of Operational Efficiency (CAOE) awarded $500,000 to CREATE Senior Fellows Richard John (USC) and Robin Dillon (Georgetown), as well as Nicholas Scurich (UC Irvine) for the study of Normalcy Bias.
This project seeks to identify potential cognitive and motivational biases that might impact United States Coast Guard (USCG) decision-making and determine how these biases affect decisions that result in normalcy bias, wherein warning signals and threats are disbelieved.
The team utilizes a normative Signal Detection Theory (SDT) framework, which partitions decision accuracy into (1) the ability to discriminate signals from noise and (2) the selection of a decision threshold. This framework illustrates how cognitive and motivational biases can affect both components in SAR decisions made by the USCG.
The team investigates empirical behavioral research to understand deviations from the normative SDT model, including Normalcy Bias.