Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2045

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Publication type: chapter

Heuer RJ.
. Psychology of Intelligence Analysis : Center for the Study of Intelligence, US Central Intelligence Agency 1999
http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/19104/index.html

Abstract:

Author’s Preface
This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing, updating, and additions, articles written during 1978-86 for internal use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Four of the articles also appeared in the Intelligence Community journal Studies in Intelligence during that time frame. The information is relatively timeless and still relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis.

The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous information. I selected the experiments and findings that seem most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need of communication to intelligence analysts. I then translated the technical reports into language that intelligence analysts can understand and interpreted the relevance of these findings to the problems intelligence analysts face.

The result is a compromise that may not be wholly satisfactory to either research psychologists or intelligence analysts. Cognitive psychologists and decision analysts may complain of oversimplification, while the non-psychologist reader may have to absorb some new terminology. Unfortunately, mental processes are so complex that discussion of them does require some specialized vocabulary. Intelligence analysts who have read and thought seriously about the nature of their craft should have no difficulty with this book. Those who are plowing virgin ground may require serious effort.

I wish to thank all those who contributed comments and suggestions on the draft of this book: Jack Davis (who also wrote the Introduction); four former Directorate of Intelligence (DI) analysts whose names cannot be cited here; my current colleague, Prof. Theodore Sarbin; and my editor at the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, Hank Appelbaum. All made many substantive and editorial suggestions that helped greatly to make this a better book.

Table of Contents
Author’s Preface
Foreword by Douglas MacEachin
Introduction by Jack Davis

PART I—OUR MENTAL MACHINERY
Chapter 1: Thinking About Thinking
Chapter 2: Perception: Why Can’t We See What Is There to Be Seen?
Chapter 3: Memory: How Do We Remember What We Know?

PART II—TOOLS FOR THINKING
Chapter 4: Strategies for Analytical Judgment: Transcending the Limits of Incomplete Information
Chapter 5: Do You Really Need More Information?
Chapter 6: Keeping an Open Mind
Chapter 7: Structuring Analytical Problems
Chapter 8: Analysis of Competing Hypotheses

PART III—COGNITIVE BIASES
Chapter 9: What Are Cognitive Biases?
Chapter 10: Biases in Evaluation of Evidence
Chapter 11: Biases in Perception of Cause and Effect
Chapter 12: Biases in Estimating Probabilities
Chapter 13: Hindsight Biases in Evaluation of Intelligence Reporting

PART IV—CONCLUSIONS
Chapter 14: Improving Intelligence Analysis