Toma de decisión según racionalidad/afectividad, entrenamiento y saturación cultural en situaciones multiculturales: Un estudio experimental con soldados para la paz

Abstract

Los llamados modelos duales proponen dos tipos de procesamiento de la información, relacionados con los modos de tomar decisiones emocionales y racionales. La presente investigación se focalizó en el estudio de la toma de decisión en soldados para el mantenimiento de la paz (i.e., cascos azules), que es personal militar enviado por la Organización Naciones Unidas (ONU) para mantener la paz y brindar ayuda humanitaria en zonas de conflicto. Se empleó un diseño factorial 2x2x2, con las variables independientes modalidad decisoria, entrenamiento como soldado para la paz y saturación cultural de la situación observada, y con la variable dependiente respuesta de intervención en la situación observada. Según las reglas de la ONU, no se debería intervenir en las situaciones multiculturales presentadas en este estudio. Se corroboraron tres hipótesis: (a) la toma de decisión basada en el procesamiento racional de la información en comparación a la toma de decisión basada en el procesamiento afectivo / emocional lleva a no intervenir, (b) los expertos en misiones militares de paz internacionales (i.e., militares con entrenamiento de casco azul) en comparación a los inexpertos (i.e. militares sin entrenamiento de casco azul) realizan menos intervenciones, (c) la alta saturación de elementos culturales de las escenas en comparación a las escenas de baja saturación de elementos culturales lleva a realizar menor cantidad de intervenciones. Adicionalmente, se halló que la tendencia individual a tomar decisiones racionales urgentes está asociada negativamente al tiempo de reacción. Se discuten los resultados en relación al marco de las teorías duales.

The so called dual models that emerged in the 70ssuggest that there are two types of information processing with opposite characteristics to one another and are related to ways of making emotional and rational decisions. This research focused on the study of emotional and rational peacekeepers’ decision making. Peacekeepers are military personnel that participate in United Nations Organization (UN) international forcesin order to be deployed in conflict zones around the world to maintain peace and to provide humanitarian aid. In these missions, peacekeepers’behavior isruled by codes which are committed to ensuring the highest standards of conduct in UN military operations. According to these UN rules,servicemen should not intervene in situations of not obvious risk or no imminent physical harm to civilians of the local population. It is worth noting that inappropriate peacekeepers´ interventions can have serious negative consequences in the mission. Consequently, in the predeployment stage peacekeepers are trained by qualified military personnel with core operational and cultural information related the country where they are going to be deployed to have an effective performance during their duty. At the moment of our research, Argentinian peacekeepers were deployed in Haiti. The objective of this study was to study the effects of the emotional / rational decision-making mode, the Argentine’s soldiers training as peacekeeper, and the level of cultural saturation in the observed situations; over the decision to intervene in multiculturalsituations. For thisstudy, a piece ofsoftware called SITDE with a series of audible videos that reflect different situations related to the UN peacekeeper mission was used. There were two SITDE versions that differed from each other due to the level of cultural representation. One version contains a set of videos with high typical Haitian´s culturalsaturation. The other version, a set of homologous videosrelated to the otherseries, includesscenes with fewer aspects of Haitian´s elements. After watching each video participants had to decide whether to intervene or not to intervene in the observed scenes. They should report its decision by clicking on a screen displaying two buttons with the corresponding decision. The software recorded the participant's response and the response time of each scene. This study sought to corroborate three hypotheses about peacekeepers’ decision making on culturally diverse scenes in which they had no danger of imminent attack: (a) decision making based on rational information processing compared to decision making based on affective / emotional processing leads to not intervene; (b) military experts in international peace missions (i.e., military with UN training) compared to the inexperienced (military with no UN training) make fewer interventions and (c) the high saturation of cultural elements of the scenes compared to scenes of low saturation of cultural elementsleadsto make fewer interventions. The hypotheses were verified through a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design. The 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design included the independent variables decision making modality, training as peacekeepers, and cultural saturation of the observed situation; and the dependent variable intervention in the observed situation. The military personnel´s decision-making was manipulated by differentiated instruction, and the cultural saturation of scenes was manipulated by the use of the two SITDE versions. Additionally, it has been analyzed the relationship between the individual trend to the emotional / rational decision-making and relevant variables. It was found that the individual trend to the rational decision making in urgent situations is negatively associated to the reaction time. The results are discussed related to the frame of the dual theories.