8
Franklin G. Mixon, Jr. and Kamal P. Upadhyaya
Military strategy, as conducted by generals pouring over battle maps, orders of battle, and supply chain schedules, involves slow and deliberative thinking. However, in their conduct of tactical military operations field commanders are often required to make fast, “seat of the pants” judgments about extremely fluid situations. Although distinct, each of the processes employs what behavioral economists led by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman (2011) refer to as a system of thinking. Military strategy traditionally involves the construction of thoughts in an orderly series of steps, while tactical decision-making on the battlefield mostly entails effortlessly originating impressions and freewheeling impulses and associations (Kahneman, 2011). As this chapter indicates through a review of relevant scenes in the movie Saving Private Ryan and the television mini-series Band of Brothers, both of these types of thinking were integral to the successful prosecution of World War II by the Allies.
Effortful and automatic judgment: a review of the academic literature
The central tenet of the management literature on executive behavior is that an executive’s interpretation of the situations he or she faces is filtered through his or her experiences, values, and personality, and that the result of this filtering process affects his or her choices (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007).1 In a corporate setting, chief executive officers (CEOs) often have substantial latitude in allowing their preferences for risk to inform their decisions (Hambrick and Finkelstein, 1987), which, once made, may influence the risk levels they face in future decision-making contexts (Hambrick, 2007). The type of executive freedom referred to here has both negative and positive connotations. For example, the potential hazards associated with a given decision-making context are greater when a CEO’s judgment is influenced by a tendency to overestimate his or her abilities and talents, which is referred to in the corporate governance literature as hubris (Hayward and Hambrick, 1997).2 On the other hand, when the fit between the CEO’s personal traits and the risk demands associated with decision-making contexts faced by the firm are optimal, better organizational outcomes are achieved (Gerhart, Wright, and McMahan, 2002; Gerhart, 2005).
The type of CEO strategizing referred to in the theoretical and empirical studies discussed above is what Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman (2011) categorizes as “System 2” judgment.3 In this behavioral economics typology, Kahneman (2011) defines System 2 thinking as slow, deliberate, and logical, and often requiring effortful mental activities, including complex computations (Treviño, Gomez-Mejia, Luciano, Caudill, Mixon, Keen, and Detotto, 2019). Seminal research by Janis and Mann (1977) and Keeney and Raiffa (1976) argues that such conscious and analytical thinking is less susceptible to bias and intuition, and, thus, is preferred in an organizational context (Treviño et al., 2019). A more recent study by Treviño et al. (2019) indicates that analytical judgment is particularly well suited for many upper echelons situations, such as establishing an organization’s strategic vision, managing corporate portfolios, and aligning human capital with task requirements.
A new body of management literature suggests, however, that a substantial portion of human behavior is automatic and that non-conscious thoughts and feelings are important drivers of reactions and behavior (Payne, Samper, Bettman, and Luce, 2008; George, 2009; Rey, Goldstein, & Perruchet, 2009; Kahneman, 2011).4 The type of strategizing referred to in this literature fits what Kahneman (2011) identifies in his typology as “System 1” thinking, which he defines as fast, intuitive, and emotional. In juxtaposing the two systems of thought, Kahneman (2011: 14) offers a useful metaphor:
I describe mental life by the metaphor of two agents, called System 1 and System 2, which respectively produce fast and slow thinking. I speak of the features of intuitive and deliberate thought as if they were traits and dispositions of two characters in your mind. In the picture that emerges from recent research, the intuitive System 1 is more influential than your experience tells you, as it is the secret author of many of the choices and judgments that you make.5
In an important study in the genre of academic literature to which Kahneman (2011) refers above, Ambady (2010) explains that people are able to form impressions from brief observations, or “thin slices” of behavior, and that these impressions often accurately predict outcomes. Going further, Ambady (2010) discusses theoretical and empirical advancements suggesting that thin-slice judgments are intuitive and efficient, and that they can be made accurately even under conditions of distraction.6 In fact, thin-slice judgments are impeded by tasks that interfere with the intuitive process (Ambady, 2010), a result that is consistent with the counterintuitive notion described by Dijksterhuis (2004) that the more complex a problem is, the less likely that conscious thought can resolve it optimally.
As Treviño et al. (2019) point out, the field of non-conscious decision-making has led to increased interest in understanding the optimal contingency approach in unstructured and high risk organizational settings that require immediate decisions, and where subordinates require instantaneous directions from their leader, such as decision-making by military leaders on the battlefield, by emergency responders in life or death situations, or by coaches of athletic teams in game day contests. Such increased interest is aimed at generating an understanding as to what gender-based organizational outcomes would obtain in a risky decision-making context that demands a “seat of the pants” response, and where performance outcomes associated with the decision are visible in the short term (Treviño et al., 2019). In this regard, the conceptual model presented in Treviño et al. (2019) asserts that aggressive risk-taking tendencies, although detrimental in the portfolio investment decision-making environment that necessitates an analytical, protracted System 2-type strategic approach (such as would be the case in the CEO suite), would perform favorably in risky decision-making contexts in which non-conscious decision-making precedes an immediate response, and where “winner-take-all” organizational outcomes are realized in the near term.7
Recognition in the literature of how battlefield decision-making requires both strategic, or System 2, judgment and tactical, or System 1, judgment provides an avenue for exploring Kahneman’s (2011) slow and fast thinking construct to situations presented in popular war movies. The first of these different systems of judgment relies on deliberation, and complex problem solving, while the latter relies on agile, “seat of the pants” or thin-slice approaches to fluid situations. Both are, as explained in the rest of this chapter, important elements of the World War II-based motion picture Saving Private Ryan and the television mini-series Band of Brothers.
Slow and fast thinking in Saving Private Ryan
The award-winning movie Saving Private Ryan (Rodat, 1998) follows the trials of a squad of U.S. soldiers that, shortly after helping to secure Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, has volunteered to extract a missing U.S. paratrooper whose three brothers have been killed in action in various war theaters.8 As indicated near the beginning of the move, in extracting the paratrooper the Allied high command wants to prevent additional heartache suffered by his family, and members of the volunteer squad sent to extract him have been promised a discharge from the U.S. Army in return for their effort in locating the missing soldier (Rodat, 1998).
Exemplary System 1 judgment by Miller during and after the D-Day invasion
The famous opening scene in Saving Private Ryan depicts a landing craft transporting, in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, U.S. soldiers to that portion of Normandy’s Omaha Beach designated as Dog Green Sector. As the craft approaches the beach, Captain John Miller and Sergeant Mike Horvath are reminding the men in their charge of the step-by-step instructions for securing their objective (Rodat, 1998). Relatively unencumbered by distraction, this is the final stage of a process that was clearly the product of deliberative System 2 judgment informed by months of training for the occasion. Once the door of the landing craft is flung open, however, Miller, Horvath, and the other soldiers making the D-Day landing are met by the chaos of German machinegun and mortar fire, killing many on board the landing craft (Rodat, 1998). It is at this point that System 1 judgment, which Kahneman (2011, 20) describes as automatic and without a voluntary sense of control, takes over.
Miller’s adeptness at System-1 type decision-making is first seen in hastily motivating the cowering soldiers to reach the seawall where he then organizes a Bangalore torpedo relay among a mixed group of surviving solders that successfully breaches the seawall and opens a path to the German bunkers.9 Miller and his men are then pinned at the base of a bunker by a German machinegun nest, which is obstructed from view (Rodat, 1998). Under a hail of machinegun fire, and using quintessential System 1 judgment, Miller pulls a small mirror from his uniform coat and asks Private Stanley Mellish for his bayonet. Miller then retrieves chewing gum from Horvath’s mouth, presses it against the blade of Mellish’s bayonet and affixes the small mirror to the chewing gum (Rodat, 1998). Using this quickly-fashioned extendable viewing device, Miller successfully guides his team’s sniper, Private Daniel Jackson, across open ground and into defilade, a position from which he eliminates the threat from the German machinegun nest, allowing Miller and his men to climb the hill above the beach (Rodat, 1998).
After assisting in securing Omaha Beach, Miller is presented with the opportunity to accept a special mission, with the reward of discharge from the U.S. Army upon completion, from Allied high command. The special mission involves the rescue of a U.S. airborne soldier, Private James Ryan, whose three brothers have been killed in action (Rodat, 1998).10 In putting together a team for the special mission, Miller again employs the type of deliberate and logical approach referred to by Kahneman (2011, 21) as System 2 thinking, which involves the conscious, reasoning self that has beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do. He first secures the services of Corporal Timothy Upham, a U.S. Army interpreter who is fluent in both French and German. To Upham he adds medical technician Irwin Wade, Horvath, Mellish, Jackson, and Privates Richard Reiben and Adrian Carpazo. While putting his squad together Miller consults with his superiors on his plan for extracting Ryan from the French countryside (Rodat, 1998).
Midway along their journey to where Ryan is believed to be located, Miller’s squad encounters a German radar station guarded by a machinegun team in a sandbag bunker (Rodat, 1998).11 With automatic System 1 judgment, which is capable of handling complex patterns of ideas (Kahneman, 2011, 21), again moving to the forefront, Miller speedily organizes a bounding maneuver to secure the radar station. Before initiating the plan Mellish asserts that securing the radar sight is an unnecessary risk for the squad given its primary mission of reaching and rescuing Ryan (Rodat, 1998). Miller reminds Mellish and the others that their mission is “to win the war,” at which point the squad proceeds to successfully execute Miller’s plan, which is led by three runners – Mellish to the left, Miller up the middle, and Jackson to the right – under the cover of suppressive fire from Horvath and Reiben. Miller’s assault advances and applies pressure on the machinegun team until the barrel of the German machinegun overheats and has to be replaced, creating an opening for the assaulting force to overtake the German machinegun team with grenades (Rodat, 1998).12
Exemplary Systems 1 and 2 judgment by Miller and Ryan before and during climactic battle
When Miller’s depleted squad finally reaches the French town held by Ryan and a ragtag force, it learns that Ryan and his fellow paratroopers hold a key bridge over a river, blocking the German army’s access to the Normandy beaches (Rodat, 1998). Determined not to lose control of the town and its bridge to an imminent German assault, the U.S. Airborne forces holding the town inform Miller of their available weaponry – two machineguns, 17 grenades, 11 mines, two bazookas (with eight rounds), and assorted small arms. Prior to Miller’s arrival, the force saw its mortar tube destroyed by artillery fire, but that it does have a large cache of Composition B explosives (Rodat, 1998).
After seeking Miller’s assistance in preparing for the imminent German attack, Miller suggests that the Germans are likely to choose to flank the town and that the Americans gathered there should attempt to draw the Germans up the main road between the town’s damaged buildings where they can disable the German armor and create a bottleneck (Rodat, 1998). Miller is then asked how, without heavy weaponry, they are to disable a Tiger tank. At this point an iconic scene in the movie occurs, consisting of the dialogue below (Rodat, 1998):
MILLER: We could hit the tank in the tracks.
RYAN: Yeah, but with what?
MILLER: (After brief contemplation) We could try a sticky bomb.
RYAN: A sticky bomb, sir?
AIRBORNE OFFICER: Sir, are you making that up?
MILLER: No, it’s in the Field Manual. You can check it out if you want to.
RYAN: We seem to be out of field manuals, sir. Perhaps you can enlighten us.
MILLER: You have some demolition, don’t you? Some TNT, or some Composition B?
AIRBORNE SOLDIER: Yeah, that’s here the one thing we’ve got plenty of. I’ve got that bridge wired with enough Composition B to blow it twice.
MILLER: Right, you can spare some then. You take a standard issue G.I. sock, cram it with as much Comp B as it can hold, rig up a simple fuse, then you coat the whole thing with axel grease. That way when you throw it, it should stick. A bomb that sticks, a “sticky bomb.” Come up with better way to knock the tracks off a tank, [and] I’m all ears.
As he explains how to prevent the German flanking maneuver, and then how to deploy a “sticky bomb,” Miller, followed by paratroopers, is moving around the town (on foot) in a way that exudes confidence and command of the situation, which is clearly a dire one. Despite the pressure and distractions of the situation and the environment, this iconic scene offers a quintessential illustration of a mix of what Kahneman (2011) categorizes as Systems 1 and 2 judgment, the latter of which is associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration, and which constructs thoughts in an orderly series of steps (Kahneman, 2011, 21), by Miller.
As the German force approaches, Jackson, who has been placed by Miller in a church tower alongside a machine gunner, signals that the German force consists of two Tiger tanks, two Panzer IV tanks, and more than 50 soldiers (Rodat, 1998). Miller’s plan works as expected as Reiben is able to entice one of the Tiger tanks down the main road. Once there, the mines are detonated, sending mounds of rubble on top of the trailing Germany infantry, after which two U.S. Airborne infantry are able to destroy the track of the Tiger tank using “sticky bombs.” However, the German force deploys an anti-aircraft gun to devastating effect, at which point Miller directs Reiben to flank the gun and provide covering fire (Rodat, 1998). With German infantry advancing from three sides, Miller’s force is close to defeat when Ryan suggests that the mortar rounds can be armed by hand (by slamming them against a hard surface) and thrown as grenades. He and Miller deploy several of these rounds in such a fashion, allowing the Americans to retreat toward the river bridge (Rodat, 1998).13
Once it has retreated across the key bridge, Miller’s force faces almost certain defeat. Its attempts to destroy the bridge are unsuccessful and the remaining Tiger tank is close to crossing the river (Rodat, 1998).14 In the process of defending the bridge and attempting to detonate the Composition B, Miller is mortally wounded by a German marksman. At the last instant, however, fighter planes of the U.S. Air Force arrive and destroy the Tiger tank, forcing the Germans into a headlong retreat away from the town (Rodat, 1998). As the dust settles, U.S. reinforcements arrive and Miller, using his last breaths, bids farewell to Ryan. The movie ends by flashing forward, into Ryan’s old age, where he is saluting Miller’s headstone and paying homage to Miller’s coherent System 1 judgment, at a Normandy cemetery (Rodat, 1998).
The episodes from Saving Private Ryan described above provide compelling illustration of Systems 1 and 2 judgment. The movie Saving Private Ryan is, however, a fictional story about World War II combat. Illustration of these decision-making concepts would, perhaps, be even more compelling if told by Hollywood using a real-life history of events. Fortunately, as pointed out in the next section of this chapter, the television mini-series titled Band of Brothers provides such a platform.
Slow and fast thinking in Band of Brothers
Based on the book by Ambrose (1992), the television mini-series Band of Brothers (Jendresen, Hanks, Orloff, Frye, Yost, McKenna, and Bork, 2001) follows the World War II exploits of E Company (i.e., Easy Company) of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division, beginning with their training at Camp Taccoa in Georgia and ending with their encampment near the border between Austria and Germany in 1945, at the conclusion of the war in Europe.15 Easy Company’s service during World War II included its airdrop into Normandy on the night/morning of June 5/6 of 1944, its defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, and its liberation of a portion of the Nazi concentration camp apparatus.
Exemplary System 2 judgment by Sobel in the training of Easy Company
The first episode of Band of Brothers, titled “Currahee,” introduces viewers to the paratroopers’ training regimen at Camp Taccoa, Georgia, in 1942. The men of Easy Company are led by Lieutenant, and later Captain, Herbert Sobel, who is a deliberate, attention-to-detail commander who exemplifies the effortful System 2 judgment, which allocates attention to mental activities that demand it, described in the prior section (see Kahneman, 2011, 21). Sobel has Easy Company marching up and down Currahee Mountain day and night, while other companies in the 506th Regiment are bunked or on weekend passes (Jendresen et al., 2001). In fact, Sobel is commended for his unit’s training performance by his superior, Colonel Robert Sink.
Sobel’s lack of System 1 judgment and his dismissal from Easy Company
As the Company embarks on certification day, which consists of five separate jumps in a single day, and after which each paratrooper receives his “jump wings,” viewers sense a crack in Sobel’s psyche as he exhibits visible fear of the coming paradrop. That crack is exposed further later (on June 23, 1943), at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, where Easy Company is participating in war games (Jendresen et al., 2001). During the exercise Sobel loses his composure, insisting that his men are in the wrong position. Lieutenant Richard Winters, Sobel’s executive officer, counters that the group is in “textbook position” for a successful ambush and that it should maintain its current location (Jendresen et al., 2001). Sobel overrules the recommendation and orders the platoon to leave the position, after which he is informed by a training officer that 95 percent of his unit, including Sobel himself, would have likely been killed had they been in actual combat. It is here that the men under Sobel’s command get their first indication that he lacks the kind of System 1 judgment, which, when effective, is adept at finding a coherent causal story that links the fragments of knowledge at one’s disposal (Kahneman, 2011, 75), that will be necessary to command the Company in battle (Jendresen et al., 2001). At the same time, some of them, including Lieutenant Lewis Nixon, get the impression that Winters may have such judgment.
In late 1943, after Easy Company has moved to England to prepare for the invasion of Europe, it is again participating in war games. On this occasion Sobel’s platoon finds itself out of position – a full map grid off as Sobel is informed – and late to a key checkpoint (Jendresen et al., 2001). Exhibiting frustration with the inadequacy of Sobel’s System 1 judgment, the soldiers in his platoon convince George Luz, the Company comic and master impersonator, to impersonate Sobel’s commander and berate Sobel for getting the platoon lost. Impersonating the commander from the cover of countryside brush, Luz orders Sobel to cut a barbed wire fence and make up for lost time (Jendresen et al., 2001). Although he does as ordered, by the time Sobel’s platoon reaches the objective it is occupied by forces led by Winters, which have improvised as a result of Sobel’s errant behavior. At this point the men of Easy Company have little doubt which of the two men possesses the requisite System 1 judgment for leading them into battle and which one does not.
After the loss to Winters, Sobel cites Winters for a minor infraction, a decision that initiates a trial by court martial. Upon hearing the news the men of Easy Company grow anxious at the thought of jumping into territory occupied by the Third Reich without Winters (Jendresen et al., 2001). In response, several of the non-commissioned officers (NCOs), including Carwood Lipton, William Guarnere, John Martin, and Denver “Bull” Randleman, act to resign their leadership positions in support of Winters. In response, Sink dismisses one of the NCOs and demotes another to private. Still, with the invasion looming, Sink also chooses to transfer Sobel, a decision that is likely made out of his own concerns about Sobel’s inability to make decisions both quickly and appropriately in emergency situations – classic System 1 judgment – to a parachute training school and turn his command over to Winters (Jendresen et al., 2001).16
Exemplary System 1 judgment by Winters in leading the assault on Brécourt Manor
During episode two, which takes place throughout D-Day, the men of Easy Company are gathering at a makeshift command post near the French village of Saint-Marie-du-Mont. From the command post the sound of German artillery located at nearby Brécourt Manor could be heard (Jendresen et al., 2001). Asked to knock out the artillery guns which are bombing the area near Utah Beach to devastating effect, Winters employs a mix of Systems 1 and 2 judgment in quickly drawing up a plan (using paper and pencil) that consists of two separate squads of three men each. Lipton is tasked with bringing TNT to be used to destroy what the small force believes to be four German artillery guns (Jendresen et al., 2001). Selected to comprise the group are Lieutenant Lynn “Buck” Compton, Donald Malarky, Joseph Liebgott, Joseph Toye, and Guarnere, among others.
Once in position Winters instructs Compton to take two men and attack a machinegun nest that is protecting the four guns from the left as he (Winters) draws their fire from the right. Winters then instructs Lipton to remain in cover, providing support fire, until the first gun is captured, at which point Lipton is to rush in with the TNT and destroy the gun (Jendresen et al., 2001). Under covering fire from Winters, Compton, Malarky and Guarnere overrun the machinegun nest, at which point Winters and the assaulting force rush into the trench line that supports the artillery guns. Guarnere and a group of men secure the first gun, after which Winters, Compton, and Toye capture the second (Jendresen et al., 2001). As Winters peers over the trench wall he sees a confused German machinegun team firing on the third artillery gun.
With two of four guns captured, the assault teams await the arrival of Lipton, but he is attending to a wounded soldier. In the absence of Lipton, Winters finds another soldier with TNT and he instructs the solder to place it in the artillery gun’s barrel (Jendresen et al., 2001). Lacking a fuse, Winters quickly improvises by setting the charge of a German grenade and dropping it down the barrel, destroying the first gun. The group then proceeds to the second gun with TNT and German grenades and, upon arrival, Winters instructs Compton to capture the third gun (Jendresen et al., 2001). Winters and his men then destroy the second gun. After Compton and Malarky capture the third gun, Winters arrives with TNT and German grenades. While the third gun is being disabled Winters discovers a German battle map (Jendresen et al., 2001).17
At this point Lieutenant Ronald Speirs and elements of Dog Company arrive with additional ammo. Speirs requests permission to capture the fourth gun, which Winters grants (Jendresen et al., 2001). Speirs and his men succeed in capturing the fourth gun, after which Winters directs Lipton to provide Speirs with some TNT in order to destroy it. Winters then runs the length of the trench line instructing all assaulting forces to return to battalion headquarters (Jendresen et al., 2001).18 In recognition of their bravery in the assault on the guns at Brécourt Manor, Lipton, Malarky, Toye, and others were each awarded the Bronze Star while Compton and Guarnere were both awarded the Silver Star. For his part in leading the assault with exemplary Type 1 judgment, Winters was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (Jendresen et al., 2001).
Lastly, the result of the U.S. Airborne’s assault on Brécourt Manor illustrates how Systems 1 and 2 judgment interact. That result is depicted by the following screen appearing at the end of episode two of Band of Brothers (Jendresen et al., 2001):
Easy Company’s capture of the German Battery became a textbook case of an assault on a fixed position, and is still demonstrated at the United States Military Academy, today.
As Kahneman (2011, 21) points out, the capabilities of System 1 include innate skills that humans share with other animals. However, some System 1 mental activities become fast and automatic through prolonged practice (Kahneman, 2011, 22). As Kahneman (2011, 22) adds, System 1 has learned association between ideas, learned skills, and may lead to expertise. At the same time, System 2 has some ability to change the way System 1 works by programming, as Kahneman (2011, 24) indicates, the normally automatic functions of attention and memory. The idea that West Point’s instructors are to this day employing the Winters-led assault on the guns at Brécourt Manor as military pedagogy attests to Kahneman’s (2011) assertion that our systems of thinking may be viewed as interconnecting.
Failure of System 1 judgment by Dike in the assault on Foy
Although many of the episodes in the Band of Brothers series, all of which are listed in Table 8.1, present successes involving Winters’ System 1 judgment, there is a particular event in the seventh episode, titled “The Breaking Point,” that deserves closer attention, given that it involves examples of both failure and success in System 1 decision-making circumstances. This episode covers the end of what is known as the Battle of the Bulge, and during the second half of the episode Easy Company is preparing for an assault on the Belgian town of Foy.
TABLE 8.1 Episodes in the Band of Brothers series
|
Episode |
Episode Title |
|
1 |
“Currahee” |
|
2 |
“Day of Days” |
|
3 |
“Carentan” |
|
4 |
“Replacements” |
|
5 |
“Crossroads” |
|
6 |
“Bastogne” |
|
7 |
“The Breaking Point” |
|
8 |
“The Last Patrol” |
|
9 |
“Why We Fight” |
|
10 |
“Points” |
Source: Jendresen et al. (2001).
The night before the assault on Foy, Sergeant Lipton, who was to lead 2nd Platoon, paid a visit to Winters, who by then held the rank of Captain and would not be participating in the impending mission. During their brief discussion, Lipton expressed his concern that Lieutenant Norman Dike, who had replaced Winters in direct command of Easy Company, did not have the necessary System 1 judgment to lead Easy Company in the assault on the town (Jendresen et al., 2001). It is at this point that the following exchange about Dike’s leadership of the assault occurs:
WINTERS: Well, he’s gonna be there tomorrow.
LIPTON: Yes sir, I understand he will be there physically. But tomorrow’s gonna be the real deal, and he’s gonna have to lead those men. And, he’s gonna have to make decisions, sir, and I gotta tell you, sir, I think he’s gonna get a lot of Easy Company men killed.
As is suggested by the dialogue above, Lipton is concerned about Dike’s System 1 judgment, which he (Lipton) thinks will be crucial to a successful assault on the Belgian town. Absent appropriate System 1-type tactical judgment, many of Lipton’s soldiers and friends are feared by Lipton to likely be killed in the forthcoming early-1945 battle.
The next day, prior to the assault, Winters explains to Dike that there is a good bit of open ground to traverse, with very little cover, before the assault reaches the outskirts of Foy. As such, Winters emphasizes that a quick and agile assault is necessary in order to avoid German mortar and artillery fire (Jendresen et al., 2001). Although the assault begins as planned, confusion overcomes Dike when he cannot locate 1st Platoon, and he orders a halt to the advance and commands all units to seek cover. With Winters, who is located at the edge of the adjacent forest, exhorting Dike to move forward, the assault stalls and Easy Company’s casualties begin to rise (Jendresen et al., 2001).
Amidst the chaos Dike orders 1st Platoon to flank Foy and assault from the rear, thus dividing his force, while other elements of Easy Company are ordered by Dike to provide suppressing fire. Seeing his old company pinned down by machinegun and mortar fire, Winters attempts to rush in and reinvigorate the assault but is stopped by his superior officer. Instead, Winters orders Dog Company’s Lieutenant Speirs to relieve Dike of command and lead Easy Company’s assault on Foy (Jendresen et al., 2001). Given this turn of events, Lipton’s concerns, which were also held by Winters, are proven to have been justified as Dike’s inability to lead the assault stemmed from Dike’s inadequate stock of System 1 judgment (human) capital.
Exemplary, yet risky, System 1 judgment by Speirs in assaults on Brécourt Manor and Foy
As indicated in the upper echelons literature, System 1-type judgment often entails excessive risk (recklessness) and/or is susceptible to hubris. These limitations of System 1 judgment are seen in the aforementioned second episode of Band of Brothers, when elements of Easy Company are assaulting the German artillery guns located at Brécourt Manor and aimed at Utah Beach. Upon capturing the third gun, Dog Company Lieutenant Ronald Speirs appears on the scene and requests Winters’ permission to lead an assault on the fourth and final artillery piece (Jendresen et al., 2001). Receiving Winters’ endorsement, Speirs and a small squad hurriedly rush the artillery emplacement. However, to the astonishment of both Winters and Compton, Speirs fails to use the cover of the trench and instead rushes the gun emplacement over relatively open ground. For an instant, Winters and Compton fear that Speirs’ seemingly wreckless System 1 judgment led to his death. That notion fades when Speirs emerges from the captured gun emplacement and gives the “all clear” sign to Winters (Jendresen et al., 2001).
Such seemingly reckless System 1 judgment by Speirs is seen again in the aforementioned assault on Foy (Jendresen et al., 2001). Upon receiving Winters’ order to relieve Dike of command, Speirs rushes in through artillery blasts and reaches Lipton, who informs Speirs that 1st Platoon is attempting to flank Foy but is partially pinned down by a sniper’s nest in the second floor of a building at the edge of the town, while the rest of the Company is spread out and under fire. Displaying the System 1 judgment lacked by Dike, Speirs quickly orders (1) mortars and grenade launchers to concentrate on the sniper’s nest until it is eliminated, (2) the backward elements of 1st Platoon to directly assault Foy, and (3) the rest of the Company to follow his lead in assaulting the town (Jendresen et al., 2001).
Upon reaching the outskirts of Foy, Lipton informs Speirs that Item Company (i.e., I Company) is on the other side of Foy, and that lacking radio communications the assault risks allowing the German armored infantry holding Foy to slip away if Easy Company fails to connect with Item Company (Jendresen et al., 2001). Telling Lipton to remain in place, Speirs rushes headlong into the center of Foy, passing a number of German armored pieces and several armored infantry, all of whom seem too amazed to respond to his daring move. The admiration for Speirs’ quick decision-making and bravery by the men of Easy Company is captured by the thought narration from Lipton (Jendresen et al., 2001):
At first the Germans didn’t shoot at him. I think they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. But, that wasn’t the really astounding thing. The astounding thing was that after he hooked up with I Company [on the other side of Foy], he came back.
In the end, Easy Company captured Foy along with more than 100 German prisoners.19 Still, it is worth pondering why Speirs made such risky, perhaps reckless, judgments, particularly in this case. As Kahneman (2011, 71) explains,
The main function of System 1 is to maintain and update a model of [one’s] personal world, which represents what is normal in it. That model is constructed by associations that link ideas of circumstances, events, actions, and outcomes that co-occur within a relatively short interval. As these links are formed and strengthened, the pattern of associated ideas comes to represent the structure of events in [one’s] life, and it determines [one’s] interpretation of the present as well as [one’s] expectations of the future.
As a part of System 1’s maintenance of one’s personal world model, Kahneman (2011, 71–72) also asserts that a capacity for surprise is an essential part of one’s mental life, as it is the most sensitive indication of how one understands his or her world and what he or she expects from it.
According to Kahneman (2011, 72), surprises emanate from two separate sets of expectations – active and passive. Active expectations exist around events that are expected to occur, while passive expectations are associated with events that are normal in a situation but not sufficiently probable to be actively expected. In the latter case, however, a single event may make a recurrence much less surprising (Kahneman, 2011, 72). To take an example, Winters’ commander, Colonel Sink, was almost certainly surprised to hear from Winters and Compton on D-Day about how recklessly Speirs acted in his attempt to capture the fourth artillery gun during the assault at Brécourt Manor, and that he survived the encounter and successfully captured the gun emplacement. A few months later, when informed (perhaps again by Winters) of Speirs’ exploits during the assault on Foy, which were of significantly greater risk than those at Brécourt Manor, Sink was likely much less surprised given his prior experience with Speirs’ battlefield judgments and exploits. In other words, the success of Speirs’ System 1 judgment at Brécourt Manor in June of 1944 had turned Sink’s passive expectations about Speirs’ battlefield capabilities into active expectations about those capabilities (Kahneman, 2011, 72–73). Similarly for Speirs, success in assaulting the fourth gun at Brécourt Manor in the manner in which he did likely led to an update in his System 1 judgment that linked circumstances, actions, and outcomes in a way that led him to expect that a headlong charge into the teeth of German forces holding the Belgian town of Foy would end just as successfully.
Conclusion
The situations faced by fictional Captain John Miller and real-life war hero Major Richard Winters, told through the movie lens in Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, respectively, provide compelling stories of the systems of decision-making and judgment that are prevalent in the behavioral economics literature. Being vastly different, the type of System 1 judgment discussed by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and displayed by Winters in Band of Brothers lends itself to intense, close-quarters combat situations like that faced by Easy Company in its assault on Brécourt Manner. Thanks to Winters’ fast and agile decision-making capability, students at the United States Military Academy are today applying System 2 thinking in learning and practicing the type of nimble action in the face of adversity that was personified by Winters 75 years ago.
Notes
1 This literature is often associated with what is referred to as upper echelons theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007).
2 Hayward and Hambrick (1997) find, using a sample of 106 large acquisitions, that (1) the acquiring company’s recent performance, (2) recent media praise for the CEO, and (3) a measure of the CEO’s self-importance – each of which is an indicator of CEO hubris – are highly associated with the size of the premiums paid. As Hackbarth (2008) indicates, overconfident managers choose higher debt levels and issue debt more often than do other managers.
3 In this context, Kahneman (2011) also discusses the impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies.
4 This literature is often referred to as the non-conscious thought literature, and it generally encompasses the literatures on automatic thought and non-conscious emotions. Also relevant here is the intuition and “thin slice” judgments research domain (Ambady, 2010; Ames, Kammrath, Suppes, and Bolger, 2010; Eisenkraft, 2013).
5 Kahneman (2011, 14) refers to these systems also as “automatic System 1” and “effortful System 2.”
6 Kahneman’s (2011) groundbreaking work not only discusses the extraordinary capabilities of what he refers to as fast thinking, but also its faults and biases. For more on its faults, see Ames, Kammrath, Suppes, and Bolger (2010) and Eisenkraft (2013).
7 Treviño et al. (2019) develop a conceptual model of coaching in college basketball that posits that recruiting of new players (human capital) requires effortful System 2 judgment, while in-game decision making benefits from automatic System 1 judgment.
8 Saving Private Ryan was released in 1998 and ultimately grossed $482.3 million (Rodat, 1998; IMDb.com). It stars Tom Hanks as Captain John Miller, Matt Damon as Private James Ryan, Tom Sizemore as Sergeant Mike Horvath, Vin Diesel as Private Adrian Caparza, Edward Burns as Private Richard Reiben, Adam Goldberg as Private Stanley Mellish, Barry Pepper as Private Daniel Jackson, Giovanni Ribisi as medical technician Irwin Wade, and Jeremy Davies as Corporal Timothy Upham (Rodat, 1998).
9 Once at the seawall, Miller asks Horvath if he (Horvath) recognizes where they are, a question to which Horvath replies, “Right where we’re supposed to be …” (Rodat, 1998). This small bit of dialogue indicates the efficacy of Miller’s effortful System 2 judgment in preparation for battle.
10 The Allied high command’s decision to extract Ryan from Normandy is inspired by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 letter to “Mrs. Bixby” of Boston, informing her that her five sons had been killed in the Civil War (Rodat, 1998). Unbeknownst to Lincoln at the time, two of Bixby’s five sons had been killed, one was taken prisoner, and two deserted (Bennett, 1993).
11 At this point in the move, Miller’s squad is without Carpaza, who was killed by a German sniper the previous day (Rodat, 1998).
12 Wade is killed in this attack, reducing Miller’s squad to six (Rodat, 1998).
13 At this point in the movie Jackson has been killed by a round from a Panzer IV, and Mellish has died in hand-to-hand combat (Rodat, 1998).
14 Once across the bridge, Horvath succumbs to wounds suffered during the battle (Rodat, 1998).
15 Band of Brothers was released in 2001 and is estimated to have earned $125 million (Jendresen et al., 2001; IMDb.com). It stars Damian Lewis as Richard Winters, Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon, David Schwimmer as Herbert Sobel, Dale Dye as Robert Sink, Matthew Settle as Ronald Speirs, Donnie Wahlberg as Carwood Lipton, Neal McDonough as Lynn “Buck” Compton, Scott Grimes as Donald Malarkey, Rick Gomez as George Luz, Kirk Acevedo as Joseph Toye, Frank Hughes as William Guarnere, Ross McCall as Joseph Liebgott, Dexter Fletcher as John Martin, Michael Cudlitz as Denver “Bull” Randleman, and Peter O’Meara as Norman Dike (Jendresen et al., 2001).
16 In dismissing Sobel from Easy Company, Sink praises Sobel’s development of his paratroopers, calling them one of the finest groups in army (Jendresen et al., 2001). This attests to Sobel’s System 2 judgment.
17 Winters later learns from Nixon that the captured map indicated the location of every major German gun emplacement in Normandy. Nixon also tells Winters that the map was sent to Division headquarters (Jendresen et al., 2001).
18 This episode of Band of Brothers ends with the iconic scene of Winters looking down on a nighttime battle on June 6, 1944, and thinking to himself: “That night I took time to thank God for seeing me through that ‘day of days,’ and prayed I would make it through D+1. And if somehow I managed to get home again, I promised God and myself that I would find a quiet piece of land some place and spend the rest of my life in peace” (Jendresen et al., 2001). This scene, and the depiction of the assault on Brécourt Manor that preceded it, exemplify why Americans revere World War II veterans, and why Brokaw (2001) refers to them as “the greatest generation.”
19 As a result of their System 1 judgment, Speirs would command Easy Company through the remainder of the war, while Lipton would be promoted to Lieutenant (Jendresen et al., 2001).