Gary Klein (born February 5, 1944, in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, New York,

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) is a research psychologist famous for pioneering in the field of naturalistic decision making. By studying experts such as firefighters in their natural environment, he discovered that laboratory models of decision making could not describe it under uncertainty. His

recognition primed decision Recognition-primed decision (RPD) is a model of how people make quick, effective decisions when faced with complex situations. In this model, the decision maker is assumed to generate a possible course of action, compare it to the constraints imp ...

(RPD) model has influenced changes in the ways the Marines and Army train their officers to make decisions. Klein received his B.A. in psychology from City College of New York (1964) and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh (1969). He listed his main influences as

Hubert Dreyfus Hubert Lederer Dreyfus (; October 15, 1929 – April 22, 2017) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests included phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of bo ...

Adriaan de Groot Adrianus Dingeman (Adriaan) de Groot ( Santpoort, 26 October 1914 – Schiermonnikoog, 14 August 2006) was a Dutch chess master and psychologist, who conducted some of the most famous chess experiments of all time in the 1940s-60. In 1946 h ...

, and

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in an October 2013 interview with Bob Morris. Since 2009, Klein has been a Senior Scientist at MacroCognition LLC. He spent the first phase of his career in academia as an assistant professor of psychology at Oakland University (1970–1974). He also spent a few years as associate professor of psychology at

Wilberforce University Wilberforce University is a private historically black university in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates ...

in Ohio. The second phase was spent working for the government as a research psychologist for the U.S. Air Force (1974–1978). The Arab oil embargo of 1973 meant that pilots needed to do more of their training in simulators, and Klein began his investigations into the way people develop expertise. The third phase began in 1978 when he founded his own R&D company, Klein Associates, to study a range of topics that are now described as the Naturalistic Decision Making framework. Klein Associates grew to 37 people by the time he sold it to

Applied Research Associates Applied Research Associates, Inc is a research and engineering company headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, founded in 1979. As of 2018, its revenue was estimated at between $100 and $750 million by '' The Washington Post''. As of 2011, it h ...

(ARA) in 2005. During this third phase, Dr. Klein developed a Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model in 1985 to describe how people actually make decisions in natural settings. This research was subsequently incorporated in Army doctrine for command and control. He presented a PreMortem method of risk assessment in 1998. In 2007, he developed a naturalistic model of sensemaking, the Data/Frame model. In 2009, he presented a Management by Discovery account of how people plan when faced with ill-defined goals. He described a multi-path model of insight in 2011. He has led teams that developed several methods of cognitive task analysis for uncovering the tacit knowledge that goes into decision making and for studying cognition in complex settings, including the Critical Decision Method and the Knowledge Audit. He was one of the leaders of a team that redesigned the

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. In 2015, Gary founde
ShadowBox LLC
a cognitive skills training company. The ShadowBox Training Method originated from a Master's thesis in 2008, conducted by now-retired fire battalion chief, Neil Hintze. Gary and Neil worked together to refine this method for training cognitive skill development. The goal of the ShadowBox method is to provide a flexible, scenario-based training technique, that allows trainees to see the world through the eyes of experts — without the experts having to be present. Klein and others report that ShadowBox training has been employed in the military, law enforcement, healthcare, social services, and petrochemical domains. He is a Fellow of both the

American Psychological Association The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...

and the

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) is an interdisciplinary nonprofit professional organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, covering the fields of human factors and ergonomics. Founded in 1957, HFES claims 4500 m ...

. In 2008, he received the Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Publications

* Books ** Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions''.'' Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1999 ** The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work. Currency, 2004 ** Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2009 ** Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book 2006 ** Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights. New York, NY: Public Affairs 2013 ** Ed. (with Judith Orasanu, and Roberta Calderwood) ''Decision Making in Action: Models and Methods'' Ablex, 1993 ** Ed. (with Eduardo Salas) ''Linking Expertise and Naturalistic Decision Making'' Erlbaum, 2001 ** Ed. (with Caroline Zsambok) ''Naturalistic Decision Making'' Erlbaum, 1996 *Selected articles in refereed journals **with Roberta Calderwood and Beth W. Crandall Time Pressure, Skill, and Move Quality in Chess ''The American Journal of Psychology'', Vol. 101, No. 4 (Winter, 1988), 481–493 **with Calderwood, R. and MacGregor, D. Critical decision method for eliciting knowledge ''Systems, Man and Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on'' May/Jun 1989 Vol. 19, 3, 462–472 **with Karen J. Peio Use of a Prediction Paradigm to Evaluate Proficient Decision Making ''The American Journal of Psychology'', Vol. 102, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 321–331 **Klein, G., & Jarosz, A. (2011). A naturalistic study of insight. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 5, 335–351. **Klein, G. (2011). Critical thoughts about critical thinking. Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, 12:3, 210–224. **Klein, G., Calderwood, R., & Clinton-Cirocco, A. (2010). Rapid decision making on the fire ground: The original study plus a postscript. Journal of **Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 4, 186–209. **Kahneman, D., & Klein, G. (2009). Conditions for intuitive expertise: A failure to disagree. American Psychologist, 64, 515–526. **Klein, G. (2008). Naturalistic decision making. Human Factors, 50 (3), 456–460. **Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project PreMortem. Harvard Business Review, September, 18–19. **Klein, G., Phillips, J. K., Rall, E., & Peluso, D. A. (2007). A data/frame theory of sensemaking, In R. R. Hoffman (Ed.) Expertise out of Context. Erlbaum: **Mahweh, NJ **Klein, G., Pliske, R. M., Crandall, B., & Woods, D. (2005). Problem detection. Cognition, Technology, and Work, 7, 14–28. **Klein, G., Ross, K. G., Moon, B. M., Klein, D. E., Hoffman, R. R., & Hollnagel, E. (2003). Macrocognition. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 18(3), 81–85. **Lipshitz, R., Klein, G., Orasanu, J., & Salas, E. (2001). Focus article: Taking stock of naturalistic decision making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 14, 331–352. **Klein, G., & Weick, K. (June 2000). Making better decisions. Across the Board, 37(6), 16–22. **Klinger, D. W., & Klein, G. (1999). Emergency response organizations: An accident waiting to happen. Ergonomics in Design, 7(3), 20–25.

References

External links

Gary Klein's blog on insight

Gary Klein's blog on Psychology Today

Website of Macrocognition LLC

ASK Talks with Dr. Gary Klein. NASA ''ASK'' Issue 20 undated

Seeing through Expert Eyes: Ace decision makers may perceive distinctive worlds ''Science News'' Vol. 154, No. 3, July 18, 1998, p. 44

* ttp://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/38/klein.html What's Your Intuition ? ''Fast Company'' August, 2000
Bruce Bower, Reworking Intuition: Business simulations spark rapid workplace renovations ''Science Week'' Oct. 23, 2004; Vol. 166, No. 17, p. 263

* [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E5D8143BF931A1575AC0A9619C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/B/Brown,%20Paul%20B Brown, Paul B. What's Offline: Analyzing Failure Beforehand ''New York Times'' September 22, 2007]
MacroCognition, About Us: Gary Klein, Ph.D 2011

Noblis, Profile: Gary Klein, Ph.D.

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Fellow Profile

The Recognition Primed Decision Model, An Alternative to the MDMP for GWOT

Naturalistic Decision Making, Human Factors

ShadowBox, LLC Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Klein, Gary A. 1944 births Living people 21st-century American psychologists People from Yellow Springs, Ohio People from Fairborn, Ohio City College of New York alumni University of Pittsburgh alumni Oakland University faculty Wilberforce University faculty 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews 20th-century American psychologists