Combining the Strengths of Naturalistic and Laboratory Decision-Making Research to Create Integrative Theories of Choice

Naturalistic decision-making research contrasts with traditional laboratory research along a number of dimensions. It is typically more observational, more focused on expert performance, and more attentive to the context in which decisions are made than laboratory studies. This approach helps to shore up some of the weaknesses of laboratory research by providing incentive to develop integrative theories of choice and examining strong methods of problem solving in a choice domain. This paper contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of laboratory and naturalistic approaches to decision making. Then, it explores strategies for using both of these approaches as well as mathematical and computational modeling to find the optimal tradeoff between internal and external validity for research projects. General Audience Summary Two prominent strands of research on how people make decisions are laboratory studies (which focus on experiments often involving undergraduates or novice decision makers) and naturalistic decision-making studies (which typically explore the strategies experts use in complex settings). These strands are pursued by different researchers and the two areas of work do not sufficiently influence each other. This paper contrasts these two approaches to research and suggests the strengths of each are complementary. By combining approaches, researchers may be able to develop better and more integrative research on how people make choices.