{"id":8594,"date":"2026-06-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/?p=8594"},"modified":"2026-05-28T11:34:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:34:56","slug":"research-explores-relationship-between-structured-information-and-human-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/research-explores-relationship-between-structured-information-and-human-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Explores Relationship Between Structured Information and Human Decision-Making"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"482\" height=\"548\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/67\/2026\/05\/Senn-Screenshot-2026-05-28-113023.jpg\" alt=\"Headshot of a faculty member with a purple background.\" class=\"wp-image-8595\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1;object-fit:cover;width:280px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/67\/2026\/05\/Senn-Screenshot-2026-05-28-113023.jpg 482w, https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/67\/2026\/05\/Senn-Screenshot-2026-05-28-113023-264x300.jpg 264w, https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/67\/2026\/05\/Senn-Screenshot-2026-05-28-113023-352x400.jpg 352w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-tarleton-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7194b9771551bdc51f95aba9a299d241 wp-block-paragraph\">In a new research project, Dr. Will Senn, Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems in the Dr. Sam Pack College of Business, examines how structured information environments support human decision-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-tarleton-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2c9202a86a521888c13857d4edd28d7b wp-block-paragraph\">Dr. Senn&#8217;s post-tenure research, in which he serves as Principal Investigator, is supported by a grant that investigates how individuals apprehend\u2014or come to learn\u2014through encounters with information systems. At the center of Dr. Senn\u2019s work is the concept of <em>proximity<\/em>: the alignment between the information a system presents and what a person&#8217;s existing knowledge allows them to process and understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-tarleton-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-83153043c23dba33980d6ac093254c06 wp-block-paragraph\">The Participatory Supreme Court Game (PSCG) study tests whether displaying extracted legal factors helps participants make more accurate and consistent decisions in Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure cases. Instead of presenting cases as undifferentiated text, the software highlights the reasoning elements that experienced legal professionals use, creating proximity between the participant and the structure of legal judgment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-tarleton-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6f9a3973c41434a46f1ce0d172d2554f wp-block-paragraph\">The Participatory Democracy Budgeting Game (PDBG) is a companion study that applies the same principle to civic decision-making. It examines how participants build consensus on federal budget priorities when given structured access to the parameters that shape fiscal tradeoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-tarleton-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a8ee8dd01689d00318f387d6183aed22 wp-block-paragraph\">Both projects involve community participants recruited through local charitable organizations and will contribute anonymized data to national research repositories. The two-year project supports undergraduate research assistants and connects applied human-subjects research to foundational questions in information science and epistemology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a new research project, Dr. Will Senn, Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems in the Dr. Sam Pack College of Business, examines how structured information environments support human decision-making. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":8595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_wds_title":"","_wds_metadesc":"","_wds_focus-keywords":"","_wds_meta-robots-adv":"","_wds_meta-robots-noindex":false,"_wds_meta-robots-nofollow":false,"_wds_meta-robots-index":false,"_wds_meta-robots-follow":false,"_wds_autolinks-exclude":false,"_wds_canonical":"","_wds_redirect":"","_wds_opengraph":[],"_wds_twitter":[],"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"dvidal","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/author\/dvidal-2\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/67\/2026\/05\/Senn-Screenshot-2026-05-28-113023-264x300.jpg","coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/category\/uncategorized\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Uncategorized<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Uncategorized<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":0,"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 days ago","modified":"Updated 4 weeks ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on June 23, 2026","modified":"Updated on May 28, 2026"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on June 23, 2026 9:00 am","modified":"Updated on May 28, 2026 11:34 am"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8597,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8594\/revisions\/8597"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarleton.edu\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}