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Status Quo Bias And Ambiguity Aversion In Engineers, Christopher L. Brown

Dissertations

Systems engineers routinely engage in exercises, such as a trade studies or Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis processes, to select the best among multiple options. Managers ideally assume that these processes are conducted in a manner that is strictly rational and repeatable. A cognitive bias leading to selection of a sub-optimal choice could then have significant consequences. Research has demonstrated a number of biases in the general population, but these have not been specifically studied in systems engineers. Two such biases are ambiguity aversion and status quo bias. A survey instrument was developed to test for ambiguity aversion and status quo …