ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
Vol. 69, No. 2, February, pp. 149–163, 1997
ARTICLE NO. OB972679
Coping with Uncertainty: A Naturalistic Decision-Making Analysis
RAANAN LIPSHITZ AND ORNA STRAUSS
University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
This paper is concerned with three questions: How
do decision makers conceptualize uncertainty? How
do decision makers cope with uncertainty? Are there
systematic relationships between different conceptualizations of uncertainty and different methods of coping? To answer these questions we analyzed 102 selfreports of decision-making under uncertainty with an
inclusive method of classifying conceptualizations of
uncertainty and coping mechanisms developed from
the decision-making literature. The results showed
that decision makers distinguished among three types
of uncertainty: inadequate understanding, incomplete
information, and undifferentiated alternatives. To
these they applied five strategies of coping: reducing
uncertainty, assumption-based reasoning, weighing
pros and cons of competing alternatives, suppressing
uncertainty, and forestalling. Inadequate understanding was primarily managed by reduction, incomplete
information was primarily managed by assumptionbased reasoning, and conflict among alternatives was
primarily managed by weighing pros and cons. Based
on these results and findings from previous studies of
naturalistic decision-making we hypothesized a
R.A.W.F.S. (Reduction, Assumption-based reasoning,
Weighing pros and cons, Suppression, and Hedging)
heuristic, which describes the strategies that decision
makers apply to different types of uncertainty in naturalistic settings. ᭧ 1997 Academic Press
Uncertainty and related concepts such as risk and
ambiguity are prominent in the literature on decisionmaking (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; March &
Olsen, 1976). This prominence is well deserved. Ubiquitous in realistic settings, uncertainty constitutes a major...