Games may help train analysts to overcome bias

University Park, Pa. Game-playing may help intelligence analysts with the serious business of identifying biases that can cloud decision-making and problem-solving during life or death situations, according to researchers. Analytic exercises conducted by researchers at Raytheon that used scenario-based games designed by Col. Jacob Graham, senior research associate in the College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State, showed that some of the participants displayed anchoring and confirmation biases as they tried to determine responsibility and motivations for insurgent attacks in the scenario. Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept only information that supports current beliefs and attitudes, while anchoring leads people to overemphasize past judgments or initial hypotheses in spite of new, contradictory evidence. "Biases are often difficult to identify, but it's important to recognize bias in decision theory and analysis," said Graham, who worked with Donald Kretz and B. J. Simpson, both cognitive scientists at Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems.