Attention Deficit

nformation overload is by no means the only threat to military decision-making on the battlefield. There are other more mundane factors that can imperil the best of minds: The unique stress of combat, the immense fatigue troops often experience for long stretches of time, and the effect of collective thinking can all prove deadly in
military operations.

While these are hardly new phenomenon, they are largely ignored or overlooked by leaders, says one former Navy officer. Despite rising to the rank of commander before he retired, Alan Zimm never once attended a military course where instructors discussed the effects of fatigue and stress on decision-making.

"Absolutely never. We don't train our commanders to be aware of what can happen to them under fatigue," says Zimm, a nuclear engineer with experience aboard carriers and cruisers. "I used to have my [subordinates] out there running a nuclear reactor under gross sleep deficit. It's scary."

"We spend so much time being concerned about how much sleep a pilot gets, and yet we have captains of ships out there running around with 10,000 tons, operating under a continual sleep deficit. And the sleep he does get is very low quality because it's being interrupted," Zimm says.

Zimm believes the services should do for personnel in other specialties what they do for pilots. The military invests tremendous resources in designing cockpits to optimize pilots' flying ability and takes great care to ensure pilots receive adequate sleep, yet outside the services' air components, the military pays scant attention to the factors that affect decision-making, he says.

It's an issue Zimm has put a great deal of thought into since leaving the military. Now on the staff of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, Zimm has catalogued some of the factors that affect the decision-making ability of individuals under stress. Among his findings, people tend to:

• Lose situational awareness because they're concentrating on decisions;
• Process problems serially, rather than in parallel;
• Abandon prioritization;
• Become reactionary;
• Ignore unpleasant or unanticipated data;
• Concentrate on short-term problems;
• Make more mistakes, yet be less likely to acknowledge them;
• Be influenced by personal motives;
• Increase micro-management.

When decisions are made collectively, a phenomenon called "group-think" occurs, Zimm says, compounding problems. Groups create a dynamic where individuals feel a shared illusion of invulnerability, tend to ignore or rationalize uncomfortable information, believe unquestionably in the group's inherent morality, stereotype the enemy as evil, and assume that silence means consent. Groups also tend to give rise to self-appointed individuals who protect the group from adverse information, Zimm says.

"I think the military needs to acknowledge the phenomenon exists," he says. Military personnel should be trained to understand the dynamics of decision-making and the factors that affect their thinking, he adds. It's the first step in making better decisions.