Anxiety in the risky (cognitive) decision-making: TOGA based hypothesis

Individual anxiety has significant influence on cognitive decision-making (CDM) especially in presence of unexpected risk. The tappearance of the threat requires fast, competent and usually rational decisions which are necessary for the management of human resources, social politics and other critical man-technology complex systems. In this paper we present an hypothetical functional model of cognitive risk-based rational decision-making by means of which the influence of anxiety can be assessed and computationally simulated. At the scope, we employed the TOGA (Top-down Object-based Goal-Oriented Approach) meta-theory that allowed us to define the basic ontological modeling framework, and provided the methodological rules for the formalization of the problem. By this way we obtained a model that integrates the human symbolic and sub-symbolic reasoning functions, as well as the somatic reactions of an intelligent agent (IA). The irrational anxiety caused by the personal feeling of situational risk may have many reasons and can lead, for example, in the case of nuclear power plant operators, to behaviors not specified in their emergency management procedures. From, the behavioral point of view, the conceptualization by the IA (human agent) of her own anxiety may enable her to assess the risk more realistically and to adopt efficient and errorless decisions.