Conditions for Intuitive Expertise
A Failure to Disagree
Daniel Kahneman Princeton University
Gary Klein Applied Research Associates
This article reports on an effort to explore the differences
between two approaches to intuition and expertise that are
often viewed as conflicting: heuristics and biases (HB) and
naturalistic decision making (NDM). Starting from the
obvious fact that professional intuition is sometimes mar-
velous and sometimes flawed, the authors attempt to map
the boundary conditions that separate true intuitive skill
from overconfident and biased impressions. They conclude
that evaluating the likely quality of an intuitive judgment
requires an assessment of the predictability of the environ-
ment in which the judgment is made and of the individual’s
opportunity to learn the regularities of that environment.
Subjective experience is not a reliable indicator of judg-
ment accuracy.
Keywords: intuition, expertise, overconfidence, heuristics,
judgment
I
n this article we report on an effort to compare our
views on the issues of intuition and expertise and to
discuss the evidence for our respective positions. When
we launched this project, we expected to disagree on many
issues, and with good reason: One of us (GK) has spent
much of his career thinking about ways to promote reliance
on expert intuition in executive decision making and iden-
tifies himself as a member of the intellectual community of
scholars and practitioners who study naturalistic decision
making (NDM). The other (DK) has spent much of his
career running experiments in which intuitive judgment
was commonly found to be flawed; he is identified with the
“heuristics and biases” (HB) approach to the field.
A surprise awaited us when we got together to con-
sider our joint field of interest. We found ourselves agree-
ing most of the time. Where we initially disagreed, we were
usually able to converge upon a common position. Our
shared beliefs are much more specific than the common-
place that expert intuition is sometimes remarkably accu-
rate and sometimes off the mark. We accept the common-
place, of course, but we also have similar opinions about
more specific questions: What are the activities in which
skilled intuitive judgment develops with experience? What
are the activities in which experience is more likely to
produce overconfidence than genuine skill? Because we
largely agree about the answers to these questions we also
favor generally similar recommendations to organizations
seeking to improve the quality of judgments and decisions.
In spite of all this agreement, however, we find that we are
still separated in many ways: by divergent attitudes, pref-
erences about facts, and feelings about fighting words such
as “bias.” If we are to understand the differences between
our respective communities, such emotions must be taken
into account.
We begin with a brief review of the origins and
precursors of the NDM and HB approaches, followed by a
discussion of the most prominent points of contrast be-
tween them (NDM: Klein, Orasanu, Calderwood, & Zsam-
bok, 1993; HB: Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002;
Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Next we present some claims
about the conditions under which skilled intuitions de-
velop, followed by several suggestions for ways to improve
the quality of judgments and choices.
Two Perspectives
Origins of the Naturalistic Decision
Making Approach
The NDM approach, which focuses on the successes
of expert intuition, grew out of early research on master
chess players conducted by deGroot (1946/1978) and later
by Chase and Simon (1973). DeGroot showed that chess
grand masters were generally able to identify the most
promising moves rapidly, while mediocre chess players
often did not even consider the best moves. The chess
grand masters mainly differed from weaker players in their
unusual ability to appreciate the dynamics of complex
positions and quickly judge a line of play as promising or
fruitless. Chase and Simon (1973) described the perfor-
mance of chess experts as a form of perceptual skill in
which complex patterns are recognized. They estimated
that chess masters acquire a repertoire of 50,000 to 100,000
immediately recognizable patterns, and that this repertoire
enables them to identify a good move without having to
calculate all possible contingencies. Strong players need a
decade of serious play to assemble this large collection of
basic patterns, but of course they achieve impressive levels
Daniel Kahneman, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs, Princeton University; Gary Klein, Applied Research Associates,
Fairborn, Ohio.
We thank Craig Fox, Robin Hogarth, and James Shanteau for their
helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Daniel
Kahneman, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs,
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-0001. E-mail: kahneman@
princeton.edu
515September 2009
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© 2009 American Psychological Association 0003-066X/09/$12.00
Vol. 64, No. 6, 515–526 DOI: 10.1037/a0016755

of skill even earlier. On the basis of this work, Simon
defined intuition as the recognition of patterns stored in
memory.
The early work that led to the approach that is now
called NDM was an attempt to describe and analyze the
decision making of commanders of firefighting companies.
Fireground commanders are required to make decisions
under conditions of uncertainty and time pressure that
preclude any orderly effort to generate and evaluate sets of
options. Klein, Calderwood, and Clinton-Cirocco (1986)
investigated how the commanders could make good deci-
sions without comparing options. The initial hypothesis
was that commanders would restrict their analysis to only
a pair of options, but that hypothesis proved to be incorrect.
In fact, the commanders usually generated only a single
option, and that was all they needed. They could draw on
the repertoire of patterns that they had compiled during
more than a decade of both real and virtual experience to
identify a plausible option, which they considered first.
They evaluated this option by mentally simulating it to see
if it would work in the situation they were facing—a
process that deGroot (1946/1978) had described as progres-
sive deepening. If the course of action they were consid-
ering seemed appropriate, they would implement it. If it
had shortcomings, they would modify it. If they could not
easily modify it, they would turn to the next most plausible
option and run through the same procedure until an accept-
able course of action was found. This recognition-primed
decision (RPD) strategy was effective because it took ad-
vantage of the commanders’ tacit knowledge (Klein et al.,
1986). The fireground commanders were able to draw on
their repertoires to anticipate how flames were likely to
spread through a building, to notice signs that a house was
likely to collapse, to judge when to call for additional
support, and to make many other critical decisions. The
RPD model is consistent with the work of deGroot (1946/
1978) and Simon (1992) and has been replicated in multi-
ple domains, including system design, military command
and control, and management of offshore oil installations
(see Klein, 1998, for a review). In each of these domains,
the RPD model offers a generally encouraging picture of
expert performance. It would be a caricature of the NDM
approach, however, to describe it as being solely dedicated
to praising expertise. NDM researchers have also tried to
document and analyze failures in the performance of ex-
perts (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 1998; Klein, 1998; Woods,
O’Brien, & Hanes, 1987). In fact, the NDM movement was
crystallized by an event that resulted from a catastrophic
failure in expert decision making.
In 1988, an international tragedy occurred after the
USS Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus
(Fogarty, 1988). The USS Vincennes was an Aegis cruiser,
one of the most technologically advanced systems in the
Navy inventory, but the technology was not sufficient to
stave off the disaster. The incident has been the subject of
detailed investigation by NDM researchers (Collyer &
Malecki, 1998; Klein, 1998). As a result of the disastrous
error and subsequent political fallout, the U.S. Navy de-
cided to initiate a program of research on decision making,
the Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS)
program (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 1998).
Thus it was that in 1989 a group of 30 researchers who
studied decision making in natural settings met for several
days in an effort to find commonalities between the deci-
sion-making processes of firefighters, nuclear power plant
controllers, Navy officers, Army officers, highway engi-
neers, and other populations. Several researchers from the
judgment and decision making tradition participated in this
meeting and in the preparation of a book describing the
NDM perspective (Klein et al., 1993). Lipshitz (1993)
identified several decision-making models that were devel-
oped to describe the strategies used in field settings, in-
cluding the recognition-primed decision model (Klein,
1993), the cognitive continuum model (Hammond, Hamm,
Grassia, & Pearson, 1987), image theory (Beach, 1990), the
search for dominance structures (Montgomery, 1993), and
the skills/rules/knowledge framework and decision ladder
(Rasmussen, 1986). The NDM movement that emerged
from this meeting focuses on field studies of subject-matter
experts who make decisions under complex conditions.
These experts are expected to successfully attain vaguely
defined goals in the face of uncertainty, time pressure, high
stakes, team and organizational constraints, shifting condi-
tions, and action feedback loops that enable people to
manage disturbances while trying to diagnose them
(Orasanu & Connolly, 1993).
A central goal of NDM is to demystify intuition by
identifying the cues that experts use to make their judg-
ments, even if those cues involve tacit knowledge and are
difficult for the expert to articulate. In this way, NDM
researchers try to learn from expert professionals. Many
NDM researchers use cognitive task analysis (CTA) meth-
ods to investigate the cues and strategies that skilled deci-
Daniel
Kahneman
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