Mental Models in Decision Making and Implications for Human Resource Development

Abstract

The problem and the solution. Humans constantly construct mental models of reality, which include their assumptions, beliefs, experiences, and biases about the world. In fact, humans construct mental models of reality often without an awareness of it. In decision making, mental models include an individual's perception of a situation, variables in the system, alternative solutions, decision premises, and biases. Because mental models reflect the decision structure and are difficult to understand on a concrete level, this article aims to illustrate the influence of mental models on decision-making processes and, more important, how they can be made explicit and altered. In addition, this article suggests that working with mental models can be viewed as a developmental process and thus is within the domain of human resource development expertise.