CONCEPT
Recognition-Primed Decision Model
Klein's 1980s framework describing how experienced practitioners decide under pressure — not by comparing options but by recognizing patterns and mentally simulating actions.
The Recognition-Primed Decision model is Gary Klein's foundational contribution to cognitive science, developed through thousands of critical incident interviews with firefighters, nurses, and military commanders. The model describes a two-phase process: first, rapid pattern recognition in which current conditions activate stored cases from the expert's long-term memory, along with an associated action script; second, mental simulation in which the expert runs the recognized action forward in time, watching for moments when the projected scenario breaks down. Experts go with their first recognized option more than eighty percent of the time, modifying or cycling to new patterns only when simulation reveals misfit. The model overturned decades of classical decision theory by demonstrating that expert cognition operates through satisficing within recognition rather than optimization across alternatives — and that this compressed analysis is both faster and more reliable than formal comparison under field conditions.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The RPD model emerged from Klein's 1984 interviews with fire commanders in Cleveland, Ohio, who could not explain how they