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.