Klein, Gary (A.) 1944-

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KLEIN, Gary (A.) 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born February 5, 1944, in New York, NY; son of Sam (a furrier) and Ruth (a homemaker) Klein; married Helen Altman, August 7, 1966; children: Rebecca, Devorah. Education: City College of New York, B.S., 1964; University of Pittsburgh, M.S., 1967, Ph.D., 1969. Hobbies and other interests: Handball, tennis, bicycling, Go, movies, reading.

ADDRESSES:

Home—740 Wright St., Yellow Springs, OH 45387. Office—Klein Associates, Inc., 1750 Commerce Center Blvd. N., Fairborn, OH 45324. Agent—Katinka Matson, Brockman, Inc., 5 East 59th St., New York, NY 10022.

CAREER:

Oakland University, Rochester, MI, assistant professor of psychology, 1969-74; Air Force Human Resources Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, research psychologist, 1974-78; Klein Associates, Inc., Fairborn, OH, chairman and chief scientist, 1978—.

MEMBER:

American Psychological Association, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Judgment and Decision Society.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with J. Orasanu, R. Calderwood, and C. E. Zsambok) Decision Making in Action: Models and Methods, Ablex Publishing Corp. (Norwood, NJ), 1993.

(Editor, with C. E. Zsambok) Naturalistic Decision Making, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Mahway, NJ), 1994.

Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

(Editor, with Eduardo Salas) Linking Expertise and Naturalistic Decision Making, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 2001.

Intuition at Work: Why Developing Your Gut Instincts Will Make You Better at What You Do, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to scholarly periodicals and author of research papers.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Research projects on the nature of sensemaking, on replanning, and on coordination.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gary Klein is one of a growing number of scientists who feels that decision-making models in laboratory situations do not give a full picture of the spectrum of cognitive devices that inform choices. He argues that such intangibles as gut instinct, wisdom, and intuition can and should be important aspects of the decision-making process. Klein's research has focused on people who are forced to make important decisions quickly, such as soldiers in battle, firefighters, and police officers. He suggests, however, that his "Naturalistic Decision Making" methodology can equally apply to any workplace situation.

In Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, Klein maintains that personal experience endows individuals with tools that they can apply to decision making, and that not all of the tools are rational. Among the examples of intuitive genius he cites are generals such as Napoleon and Robert E. Lee, who seemed to have a natural knack for reading battle situations and making quick choices for action. In a review of the work for Personnel Psychology, John J. Lawler wrote: "Klein's book provides a refreshing alternative to the dominant perspective of behavioral decision theorists that people are ill equipped to make good decisions in harsh situations because they lack needed information processing capabilities." According to F. G. Hoffman in the Marine Corps Gazette, Sources of Power "is a tremendously valuable body of work and offers a rich number of anecdotes and examples of interest to both commanders and educators."

Klein introduces his concepts to general readers in Intuition at Work: Why Developing Your Gut Instincts Will Make You Better at What You Do. This book distills the concepts that he teaches through his consulting firm—namely, that one should trust gut instincts in the decision-making process because these instincts are often founded on prior experiences. He also suggests ways in which individuals can increase their intuitive powers through a series of mental exercises. In her Fortune magazine column, Anne Fisher called Intuition at Work "fascinating" and suggested that its readers would learn to "deal with the unknown in ways that are quick and effective." In CIO Insight, Paul B. Brown declared of the book: "Klein, a noted researcher, has very carefully and methodically laid out a convincing case that can be boiled down to this: Trust your gut. Yes, skills, training and even education are helpful, but the most underused arrow in your management quiver may be your intuition."

Klein told CA: "I am not a full-time writer. I am a research psychologist. My title is chief scientist at Klein Associates Inc. I am a decision researcher who owns a thirty-five-person Research and Development company that has been in business for over twenty-five years.

"I was born in 1944 in the Bronx, New York, and attended school there. I left New York to go to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh, 1964-69, and received my Ph.D. in experimental psychology. I taught at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan from 1970 to1974, primarily courses in experimental psychology. Then I took a position as a Research Psychologist for the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio, and worked there from 1974 to1978. My team was trying to help the Air Force make better use of flight simulators.

"After becoming interested in cognitive training issues and decision making, I was particularly eager to examine some of the implications of the work of Hubert Dreyfus on the limitations of Artificial Intelligence—I thought that this work had important implications for cognitive psychology as well. At that time my research team was not investigating these issues. Therefore, I left the position to work on my own.

"The first seven years were a struggle, but then in 1985 a research project helped us unlock some of the secrets of decision making in field settings, and from that time on the company has continued to grow and be successful. The research on decision making has helped spark a general research approach in Naturalistic Decision Making, and we find applications not only in training but also in system design and in market research. In 1998 I published Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, and this has helped popularize the Naturalistic Decision Making concepts. My latest book, Intuition at Work, was published by Doubleday in 2003."