Does Formal System Dynamics Training Improve People's Understanding of Accumulation?
Name
Does Formal System Dynamics Training Improve People's Understanding of Accumulation.pdf
Size
1.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2ae5daeddf2c6a690b19cc03d7596424
Author(s)
Sterman, John
Date Issued
October 2010
Journal
System Dynamics Review
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Citation
Sterman, John D. “Does Formal System Dynamics Training Improve People’s Understanding of Accumulation?” System Dynamics Review 26.4 (2010): 316–334. CrossRef. Web.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Research shows widespread misunderstanding of stocks and flows, even among highly educated adults. People fail to grasp that any stock rises (falls) when the inflow exceeds (is less than) the outflow. Rather, people often use the correlation heuristic, concluding that a system's output is positively correlated with its inputs. Although many argue that system dynamics training will help, evidence is scant. This paper reports an experiment with MIT graduate students to assess the impact of an introductory system dynamics course on intuitive understanding of accumulation. Results show large, statistically significant improvements in overall performance and a reduction in the prevalence of the correlation heuristic. Modest exposure to stocks and flows improves understanding of accumulation, at least among these highly educated adults. However, a minority still show evidence of correlational reasoning. The discussion considers additional experiments to deepen our knowledge of the training required to develop people's intuitive understanding of accumulation.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1002/sdr.447
