Sixteen standalone quick decision exercises, each targeting a specific concept within a mechanism level. Work through these after the staged progression (level identification → core mechanisms → key phenomena). These are the core analytical reps — higher volume, more varied, and designed for repeated spaced practice.

What

For each scenario:

1. Read the scenario
2. Identify the primary concept at play
3. Explain the mechanism briefly (parts → activities → outcome)
4. Suggest one intervention
5. Check against the answer key

When to use

After the staged QDE progression. Use for deepening mechanism fluency and identifying which levels you find harder.

Preparation

Work 3–5 exercises per session. Don't rush through the full set in one sitting — spacing matters more than volume.

Self-study protocol

Basic (no stress): Work 3–5 QDEs per session. Write your answers before checking. Score yourself: concept identification (1 point), mechanism explanation (1 point), reasonable intervention (1 point). Track which levels you find harder — revisit the relevant phenomena.

Stress (during workout): Partner reads scenario aloud while you're under physical load (assault bike, plank hold, between sets). Respond verbally. Review the written answer key during rest. Focus on concept identification under load — mechanism detail can come in review.

Spacing: First pass through all QDEs in order. Second pass (3+ days later) in randomised order. Third pass: only the ones you got wrong. Optionally: generate your own and trade with a partner.

Pattern Detector (E-level)

E1: The New Interpreter

An intelligence officer has worked with the same local interpreter for six months. A new, better-qualified interpreter is assigned to the unit. Despite objective evidence that the new interpreter is more accurate and has better source access, the officer keeps finding reasons to use the original interpreter for important meetings.

Questions:

1. Which concept best explains this behaviour?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might help?

Concept: Representation-matching (familiarity / mere exposure effect)

Mechanism: Repeated exposure to the original interpreter created fluent processing — the brain recognises familiar patterns more easily. Fluency is tagged with positive valence (feels good/safe). The new interpreter requires more cognitive effort to process, which is tagged as negative valence. The officer's "reasons" are post-hoc rationalisations of an affective preference.

Intervention: Structured exposure — mandate joint tasks with the new interpreter to build familiarity. Or: make the decision criteria explicit and written before choosing, removing the opportunity for affective preference to masquerade as reasoned judgement.

E2: The Quiet Village

A patrol commander enters a village that intelligence assesses as low-threat. She feels uneasy but can't articulate why. Her section commander says everything looks normal. Later, she realises: no children were playing outside, unusual for this time of day.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains her unease?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. How could this be trained?

Concept: Interruption theory (and/or theory of constructed emotion)

Mechanism: The commander's brain predicted a pattern (children playing) based on prior experience. The absence violated this expectation. The interruption injected arousal — experienced as unease — before conscious identification of the cause. Her brain constructed an emotional signal from the prediction error.

Intervention: After-action review that explicitly surfaces "what felt wrong before you knew why" — this trains pattern libraries and validates intuition. Exposure to varied scenarios builds richer predictive models.

E3: The Checkpoint Hesitation

A soldier at a vehicle checkpoint has been briefed on threat indicators: speeding vehicles, erratic driving, single military-age males. A vehicle approaches slowly, driven by an elderly woman with a child in the back seat. The soldier waves it through quickly without the standard checks. The vehicle contained weapons in the boot.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains the failure?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might help?

Concept: Moral judgement as categorisation

Mechanism: The soldier's brain categorised the vehicle as "non-threat" based on pattern features (elderly driver, child, slow approach) that matched the "safe" category. This categorisation happened fast and automatically, bypassing the checklist. The threat indicators briefed were overridden by stronger categorical associations (elderly woman does not equal threat).

Intervention: Training with counter-stereotypical scenarios to disrupt automatic categorisation. Procedural forcing functions: mandatory checks regardless of initial categorisation (removes discretion at the point of automatic judgement).

Lazy Controller (T-level)

T1: The Missed Report

A junior officer witnesses a senior NCO berating a recruit in terms that probably cross the line into bullying. She considers reporting it but thinks: "It wasn't that bad. He's a good instructor overall. The recruit probably needed it. It's not really my place to report someone senior." She does nothing.

Questions:

1. Which concept best explains this?
2. Identify the specific disengagement techniques used.
3. What intervention might help?

Concept: Moral disengagement

Techniques used:

• Minimising consequences: "It wasn't that bad"
• Advantageous comparison: "He's a good instructor overall"
• Attribution of blame: "The recruit probably needed it"
• Displacement of responsibility: "It's not my place"

Mechanism: The lazy controller detected moral conflict but calculated that engagement (reporting) was costly (social friction, uncertainty, effort). Disengagement was easier. The techniques are cognitive manoeuvres that reduce dissonance without changing behaviour.

Intervention: Train recognition of disengagement language in self and others. Make reporting low-friction (anonymous channels, clear procedures). Reframe reporting as professional obligation, not personal choice.

T2: The Inconsistent Punishment

A platoon commander punishes Soldier A with extra duties for being late to parade. The next week, Soldier B (a high performer and popular figure) is also late. The commander gives a verbal warning only. When challenged, he explains that "the situations were different" — though he struggles to articulate how.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains the commander's reasoning?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What might improve consistency?

Concept: Cognitive dissonance (with motivated reasoning)

Mechanism: The commander's intuition favoured leniency for Soldier B (liking, utility to the team). This conflicted with the fairness norm (equal treatment). Rather than change behaviour (punish B equally) or change attitude (admit favouritism), the lazy controller generated post-hoc reasoning to resolve dissonance: "the situations were different." The reasoning is motivated — it serves to justify the preferred outcome.

Intervention: Pre-commitment to standards: written policy applied before specific cases arise. Peer accountability: decisions reviewed by another commander. Explicit articulation requirement: "write down why this case is different before deciding."

T3: The Exhausted Decision

After a 36-hour exercise, a section commander must decide whether to push through to the final objective (2 hours away) or harbour for the night and risk missing the timing. He knows the safe choice is to harbour, but can't seem to engage with the problem properly. He flips a mental coin and pushes on. Two soldiers are injured due to poor route selection.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains the decision quality?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What structural intervention might help?

Concept: Expected value of control (cognitive control allocation)

Mechanism: Cognitive control is effortful and allocated based on expected value. Under severe fatigue, the cost side of the equation increases dramatically while the expected benefit of deliberation feels lower (decision seems binary, no good options). The lazy controller disengages because thinking feels pointless and expensive. Flipping a mental coin is disengagement.

Intervention: Mandatory decision protocols under fatigue conditions: require explicit articulation of options and risks before deciding. Battle buddies: pair decision-makers so one can check the other's reasoning. Pre-planned decision criteria: "if X, then harbour" removes deliberation load.

T4: The Blamed Victim

A soldier reports that kit was stolen from his locker. His chain of command responds: "You should have locked it properly. What do you expect in a block with 40 people?" The theft is not investigated. The soldier who reported feels he's been treated as the problem.

Questions:

1. Which concept is at work in the chain of command's response?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What's the risk of this pattern?

Concept: Attribution theory (fundamental attribution error)

Mechanism: The chain of command attributed the outcome to the victim's disposition ("careless") rather than the situation (poor security, opportunistic thief). This is the fundamental attribution error: overweighting dispositional factors for others' outcomes. It's cognitively easier — it closes the case without requiring systemic investigation.

Risk: Reporting is punished, so future incidents go unreported. Actual thieves are not caught. Trust erodes.

Intervention: Train awareness of attribution bias. Require situational analysis before dispositional conclusions. Separate "how do we prevent this" from "whose fault was it."

Affordance Auction (H-level)

H1: The Shortcut

Standing orders require vehicles to use the main road through a town, but a back route saves 20 minutes. After several uneventful trips, most drivers take the back route. A new driver, seeing others do it, follows. Her vehicle is hit by an IED on the uncleared route.

Questions:

1. Which concept best explains the drift from standing orders?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might prevent this?

Concept: Affordance competition (with choice architecture)

Mechanism: The environment presented two affordances: main road (compliant, slower) and back route (non-compliant, faster). Each uneventful trip increased the back route's perceived utility (reward) while decreasing its perceived cost (risk feels abstract). The affordance auction increasingly favoured the shortcut. Social proof (others doing it) further increased its salience and legitimacy.

Intervention: Change the choice architecture: physical barriers, mandatory logging, random checks. Increase salience of risk: near-miss reporting, vivid briefings. Reset after incidents to disrupt normalisation.

H2: The Aggressive Interrogation

An interrogator is questioning a detainee who may have information about an imminent attack. The interrogation room is small, hot, and the interrogator hasn't slept in 18 hours. His questioning becomes increasingly aggressive. Colleagues watching via camera notice but don't intervene, assuming he knows what he's doing.

Questions:

1. Which concepts are interacting here?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What environmental interventions might help?

Concepts: Two-factor theory of emotion + situationism + affordance competition

Mechanism: The interrogator experiences physiological arousal (heat, fatigue, stress). Two-factor theory: arousal is ambiguous and labelled by context. The adversarial context labels the arousal as aggression/urgency rather than exhaustion/distress. Situational factors (isolation, time pressure, physical discomfort) overwhelm dispositional self-regulation. The environment affords aggressive action more easily than measured questioning.

Intervention: Environmental design: temperature control, mandatory breaks, time limits. Observer protocols: active monitoring with clear intervention triggers (not passive assumption of competence). Rotation of interrogators.

H3: The Familiar Pattern

A platoon commander has run dozens of successful vehicle checkpoints. A car approaches at speed, and without conscious thought, he initiates the escalation-of-force procedure he's drilled many times. The vehicle contained a family rushing to hospital — the driver panicked at the checkpoint, not from hostile intent. The ROE allowed de-escalation options that weren't considered.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains the automatic response?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What is the trade-off, and how might training address it?

Concept: Recognition-primed decision-making (RPD)

Mechanism: Experienced decision-makers don't deliberate — they recognise situations as typical and retrieve a practised response. The speeding vehicle matched the "threat" pattern, triggering the drilled escalation sequence. RPD is fast and usually effective, but vulnerable to misrecognition: applying familiar patterns to novel situations.

Trade-off: RPD enables rapid response under pressure (good) but bypasses consideration of alternatives (bad when the situation is atypical).

Intervention: Train with varied scenarios including false-positive patterns. Build pause points into procedures for ambiguous cases. After-action review that specifically asks: "What else could this have been?"

Prestige Engine (I-level)

I1: The Silent Witnesses

During a social event, a popular sergeant makes racist jokes about a local population. Several junior soldiers are uncomfortable but laugh along. One soldier who doesn't laugh is later mocked for "not being able to take a joke." No one reports the incident.

Questions:

1. Which concepts explain the group's behaviour?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might work?

Concepts: Negative social capital + engaged followership (inverted)

Mechanism: The sergeant is a group representative whose behaviour signals acceptable norms. Social capital (belonging, acceptance) is gained by conforming. The soldier who didn't laugh was sanctioned — demonstrating the cost of deviance. Negative social capital: tight in-group bonds enable and enforce harmful norms. Reporting would cost more social capital than staying silent.

Intervention: Alternative prestige sources: make ethical behaviour a route to status. Leadership modelling: senior figures who visibly reject such behaviour. Anonymous reporting channels that reduce social cost. Crucially: address the representative (the sergeant), not just individual followers.

I2: The Rival Platoons

Two platoons in the same company have developed an intense rivalry. Each regularly bends rules to outperform the other in training metrics. Standards of honesty in reporting have quietly eroded in both — minor exaggerations become normal. Neither platoon would behave this way without the other's presence.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains this dynamic?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might reset the dynamic?

Concept: Positive distinctiveness

Mechanism: Groups are motivated to be positively distinct from comparison out-groups. The rival platoon provides the comparison. Norms that enable "winning" (including dishonest reporting) generate positive distinctiveness, so they're stabilised and reinforced. Remove the comparison and the pressure to cheat diminishes.

Intervention: Change the comparison: emphasise company-level identity vs other companies, or emphasise individual development vs self. Shared goals: tasks requiring inter-platoon cooperation. External accountability: metrics verified by third party.

I3: The New Officer's Dilemma

A new subaltern joins a platoon with a strong existing culture. She notices some practices that seem questionable but not clearly wrong. She wants to be accepted by the soldiers and the experienced platoon sergeant. She also wants to uphold standards. She finds herself staying quiet more than she expected.

Questions:

1. Which concept captures her tension?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What might help her navigate this?

Concept: Optimal distinctiveness

Mechanism: Individuals balance needs for inclusion (belonging to the group) and differentiation (being distinct/valued as individual). A new officer has high inclusion need (not yet accepted) and low differentiation security (hasn't proven herself). Speaking up risks exclusion before inclusion is established. The balance tips toward conformity.

Intervention: Structured integration: formal mechanisms for new officers to raise concerns without personal social cost (e.g., mentorship with external officer, anonymous upward feedback). Early wins: opportunities to demonstrate competence and build differentiation capital before tackling norm challenges.

I4: The Closed Shop

A specialist team has worked together for years and is highly effective. They resist integrating personnel from other units, claiming "they don't understand how we work." When forced to accept a new member, they exclude him from informal information sharing. He makes a mistake due to information he wasn't given, confirming their belief that outsiders are incompetent.

Questions:

1. Which concepts are at play?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What's the risk, and what might address it?

Concepts: Bonding vs bridging capital + negative social capital

Mechanism: The team has high bonding capital (strong internal ties, trust, shared knowledge). This creates insularity — bridging capital (connections to outsiders) is low. Negative social capital manifests: strong bonds exclude newcomers and create self-fulfilling prophecies (withhold information → newcomer fails → "see, outsiders are incompetent").

Risk: The team becomes a silo, unable to integrate with wider organisation, vulnerable to groupthink, and a single point of failure if members leave.

Intervention: Mandated bridging activities: cross-posting, joint tasks. Explicit onboarding protocols that don't rely on informal sharing. Leadership attention to integration as a performance metric.

Enforcement Infrastructure (C-level)

C1: The Different Standards

A military unit works alongside a civilian contractor team on the same base. Military personnel are frustrated that contractors seem to have looser standards — late starts, casual dress, less deference to hierarchy. Contractors find military personnel rigid and obsessed with trivial rules. Friction is constant.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains this friction?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. How might leaders address it?

Concept: Tight vs loose cultures

Mechanism: Military culture is tight: high assumed threat leads to dense monitoring (rank structure), certain sanctions, and strong norm constraint. Contractor culture is looser: lower threat assumption, less monitoring, less certain sanctions, more behavioural latitude. Neither is wrong — they have different enforcement infrastructures. Each judges the other by their own standards.

Intervention: Explicit discussion of cultural differences (neither is wrong, both are functional for their contexts). Identify shared norms that matter for the joint mission. Accept divergence on norms that don't affect interoperability.

C2: The Unmonitorable Patrol

A small patrol operates in a remote area with minimal communication back to headquarters. Over several weeks, their behaviour drifts: uniform standards slip, reporting becomes cursory, treatment of locals becomes rougher. When they return to the main base, they readjust quickly. Nothing reportable happened, but the drift was real.

Questions:

1. Which concept explains the drift?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What intervention might prevent this?

Concept: Tight vs loose cultures (enforcement infrastructure)

Mechanism: The tight military culture depends on monitoring density plus sanction certainty. Remote operations reduce both: fewer people observing, longer feedback loops, uncertain whether sanctions would follow. The enforcement infrastructure loosens, so behaviour loosens. Return to base restores the infrastructure.

Intervention: Increase monitoring salience even when physically impossible: video logs, regular check-ins, peer accountability pairs. Pre-deployment emphasis on self-monitoring. Clear standards for remote operations specifically. Debrief that explicitly asks about drift.

C3: The Values Poster

A unit has Army Values posters on every wall but a culture of casual cruelty in daily interactions. New soldiers quickly learn that the posters are for show — real status comes from being hard and mocking weakness. The stated values and lived values are disconnected.

Questions:

1. Which concept is failing here?
2. What is the mechanism?
3. What would it take to reconnect stated and lived values?

Concept: Virtue indeterminacy + enforcement infrastructure

Mechanism: Stated values (posters) lack enforcement infrastructure. Lived values (hardness, mockery) have enforcement: social sanction for deviation, prestige for conformity. The prestige engine (I-level) reinforces lived norms; the enforcement infrastructure (C-level) fails to override because visibility does not equal enforcement. Virtues are indeterminate — "courage" can mean "mocking weakness" if that's what the local culture rewards.

Intervention: Values mean nothing without enforcement. Leaders must visibly sanction violations of stated values and reward alignment. Articulate what the values mean concretely (reduce indeterminacy). Change prestige sources so ethical behaviour equals status.

C4: The Right vs Right

A commander must decide whether to risk her soldiers' lives to recover the body of a fallen comrade. Tactically, the risk is unjustifiable — more may die. Culturally, leaving a comrade behind is unthinkable. Both positions are defensible. She is paralysed.

Questions:

1. Which concept categorises this problem?
2. Why is this harder than a temptation?
3. What might help her decide?

Concept: Moral dilemmas vs temptations (Kidder)

Categorisation: This is a dilemma (right vs right), not a temptation (right vs wrong). Both "protect the living" and "honour the dead / never leave a comrade" are legitimate values. Prescription cannot resolve this — it requires value prioritisation.

Why harder: Temptations have a clear "should" answer that competes with "want." Dilemmas have two "shoulds." No framework gives the right answer; the commander must choose which value takes precedence in this context and accept the cost.

What might help: Articulating the dilemma explicitly (not pretending one answer is obvious). Consulting peers/superiors to distribute moral weight. Accepting that some decisions have no clean resolution — the goal is a defensible choice, not a perfect one.

Quick reference