Chapter 10: Aeronautical Decision-Making and Judgment  Experts take the first workable option they can find. While it may not be the best of all possible  choices, it often yields remarkably good results. The terms “naturalistic” and “automatic decision-making” have been coined to describe this type of  decision-making. The ability to make automatic decisions holds true for a range of experts from  firefighters to chess players. It appears the expert’s ability hinges on the recognition of patterns and  consistencies that clarify options in complex situations. Experts appear to make provisional sense of  a situation, without actually reaching a decision, by launching experience-based actions that in turn  trigger creative revisions. This is a reflexive type of decision-making anchored in training and experience and is most often  used in times of emergencies when there is no time to practice analytical decision-making.  Naturalistic or automatic decision-making improves with training and experience, and a pilot will  find himself or herself using a combination of decision-making tools that correlate with individual  experience and training. Although more experienced pilots are likely to make more automatic decisions, there are  tendencies or operational pitfalls that come with the development of pilot experience. These are  classic behavioral traps into which pilots have been known to fall. More experienced pilots, as a  rule, try to complete a flight as planned. The desire to meet these goals can have an adverse  effect on safety and contribute to an unrealistic assessment of piloting skills. These dangerous  tendencies or behavior patterns, which must be identified and eliminated, include the  operational pitfalls shown in  Figure 10-6. Operational Pitfalls Remote Pilot – Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Guide  61