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Poster presented at the International System Dynamics Conference, Washington, DC
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“10 years on average doesn’t mean 10 years in any case” –an Experimental Investigation of People’s Understanding
of Fixed and Continuous Delays
Andreas Größler, Inge Bleijenbergh, Jac Vennix*
* Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, {a.groessler, i.bleijenbergh, j.vennix}@fm.ru.nl
The purpose of the paper is to test whether people make different decisions when a
dynamic task requires either a fixed delay or a continuous delay representation. We
assume that people have a tendency to cognitively represent continuous delays in real
life situations as fixed delays. With the help of a structurally simple dynamic decision
making task, we test two conditions in a controlled experiment: hiring when personnel
stays in an organisation for exactly ten years (fixed delay condition) or when personnel
stays on average for ten years (continuous delay condition). In this preliminary study,
71 participants were tested. Findings so far show no differences in performance
between the groups, indicating that they most likely use the same cognitive
representation of the task. Since participants’ answers are substantially closer to the
fixed delay condition, we assume that people have the tendency to represent lags in
the form of discrete delays, at least in the context of personnel hiring. Research
implications comprise the repetition of the experiment to achieve a higher number of
participants and to allow for a more extreme differentiation between the two conditions.
Practical implications regard the formulation of decision making tasks within
organisations, for instance in human resource management. The value of this paper
lies in its rigorous usage of a structurally simple dynamic task to shed light on a
fundamental trait of human decision making.
Discrete vs. continuous delays Task structure
Estimations of all participants Average error for experimental groups
32%
41%
27%outside bounds (% < 50 or > 100)
wrong estimate (diff. > 5 years)
correct estimate (diff. <= 5 years)
Male
professors
Female
professors
hiring males
hiring females
leaving males
leaving females
avg time at
universitypercentage females
hirings necessary
Ini Male
Ini Female
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
discrete continuous
years
x x
to t* t to t* t
input system response