Conflict

Conflict: How Soldiers Make Impossible Decisions is about making hard choices--where all outcomes are potentially negative. The authors draw on interviews conducted with soldiers about the situations they faced and the decisions they made in war. These vivid and sometimes distressing stories allow the authors to explore the cognitive processes associated with choice, goal-directed thinking, innovation, and courage. Conflict invites readers to consider their own responses under extreme circumstances and ask themselves how they would choose between difficult options. In doing so, this book will go some way to helping readers understand what it feels like when choosing between least-worst decisions.

Neil Shortland, Laurence Alison, and Joseph Moran are interested in social cognition and the processes by which soldiers make sense of uncertain, high-risk, ambiguous, complex or contradictory information. They are especially interested in decision inertia and the use of simulated environments to study and train practitioners to overcome decision inertia.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Col. Tim Collins
Preface
1. Decisional Conflict: From Best to Least-Worst
2. Military Decision Making: Doctrine, Rationality and Field-Based Approaches
3. The Science of Selecting Least-Worst Options
4. Situational Awareness
5. Formulating Plans
6. Executing Plans
7. Team Learning
8. Least-Worst Decision Making 'in extremis'
9. Thoughts that Haunt
10. How do Soldiers Do What They Do and What Can We Learn From Them?
References