Information processing, motivation and decision making

In Botelho and Coelho, 1995, the authors presented a model of memory for autonomous artificial agents (SALT: Schema-Associative Long Term memory). The main feature of the SALT model is that it allows agents to exhibit context-dependent cognition. This is an important feature since it enables us to gain a better understanding of the reasons why someone may produce different decisions about a given problem, in different situations. In our research we focus on decisions regarding personnel selection. Namely, we are interested in addressing situations in which a manager with a particular task to be done has to decide which of his or her subordinates will be assigned to its execution. In this paper we present the COMINT model, a COgnition and Motivation INTegration model of decision making. The COMINT model extends the original SALT model to explain the influence of motivation in the information processing mechanism of the decision maker. We show that the quality of the decision making process depends on both the motivation to search information in the long term memory of the decision maker, and the motivation to ignore information. We conclude that the COMINT model is capable of generating the four different decision making styles described in (Forgas, 1994), using a single information processing mechanism. Some aspects of the implementation of the model are discussed in the paper and an example is presented.