(2023-03-31) Ooda Versus Rpd Reconciling Models Of Cognition And Conflict

OODA Versus RPD: Reconciling Models of Cognition and Conflict. I am sometimes asked about the relationship of the OODA Loop to Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) in general and Gary Klein’s Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model in particular. Usually, the asker is a fan of all three searching for a way to integrate them into a unified theory of decision making.

Boyd did not depict the OODA Loop until this very last briefing, “The Essence of Winning and Losing,” not long before his death in 1997. That final version was much more sophisticated, as indicated by Figure 2 below.

Klein did not set out to debunk Rational Choice Theory. He expected to see it validated in the field but found that practitioners rarely made decisions by developing and comparing multiple courses of action. He developed the RPD model to describe how he observed practitioners actually making decisions.

According to the RPD, a practitioner finds herself experiencing a situation in the world. Based on the cues she sees, she searches her past experiences for a pattern match and reviews what she did in that situation (see diagram)

she cannot envision a satisfactory outcome, she goes back into her experience base to find a better pattern match, and the process repeats. If she cannot find a satisfactory pattern match, she reassesses the situation to see what she may be missing. An experienced practitioner can often rapidly find a satisfactory first course of action, but the model allows for considering multiple options. However, the practitioner considers those courses of action in sequence and adopts the first one she finds satisfactory—a process called satisficing

Like Boyd, Klein developed a fuller version of his model, complete with feedback loops, as shown in Figure 4 below.

My short answer is that OODA, NDM, and RPD are different types of things. While they are generally compatible, I see no utility in trying to merge or correlate them.

First of all, NDM is a broad field of study

It is not a model but a field of research with several models in it. Klein’s RPD is one of those models

RPD is a descriptive model

It is a human cognitive model. As such, it is typically understood to take place within the mind of an individual decision maker

OODA Loop is a generalized model of adaptation to (usually hostile) surroundings

OODA is agnostic about how the “decision” actually gets made.

OODA and RPD exist side by side but are not intertwined.

while the two models may be looking at some of the same things, they are doing so from different perspectives for different purposes.