The Convergence of Explanatory Coherence and the Story Model A Case Study in Juror Decision.pdfVIP

The Convergence of Explanatory Coherence and the Story Model: A Case Study in Juror Decision Michael D. Byrne School of Psychology Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0170 byrne@cc.gatech.edu Abstract tions presented. A discussion of the implications for both approaches and possible integration will follow the presen- This paper presents an integration of two approaches to tation of the simulation models. complex decision-making from very different tradi- tions: from the psychology of jury decision, the Story Explanatory Coherence and ECHO Model, and from the philosophy of science, the Theory of Explanatory Coherence and its computational instan- In attempting to understand how it is that scientists make tiation, ECHO. The subjects in Pennington Hastie decisions to accept new theoretical positions, Thagard has (1993) generated causal “stories” to represent the constructed the Theory of Explanatory Coherence (TEC) events related to a particular trial. These stories were and a computational modeling system which embodies the modeled with ECHO, and ECHO reached the same principles of TEC, ECHO. TEC and ECHO have been used verdicts as did the human subjects. The ECHO simula- to provide “a mechanism that can lead people to abandon tions were also linked to t