Why Don't Well-Educated Adults Understand Accumulation? A Challenge to Researchers, Educators, and Citizens.¶
Cronin, M. A., Gonzalez, C., & Sterman, J. D. (2009). Why Don't Well-Educated Adults Understand Accumulation? A Challenge to Researchers, Educators, and Citizens. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(1), 116-130.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Accumulation
- The vocabulary also clarifies why intuitions about dynamics are systematically biased: people are good at perceiving and reasoning about flows — rates, recent changes — but poor at reasoning about stocks — levels, integrals — and this asymmetry is the source of a large literature of policy-misunderstanding findings, where reasoners confuse a falling rate with a falling level.
This sourceDemonstrates the systematic stock-flow failure — even educated adults infer a stock's level from its flow's recent change and confuse a falling inflow with a falling level — grounding the claim that human dynamic intuition perceives flows well and stocks poorly.
- The vocabulary also clarifies why intuitions about dynamics are systematically biased: people are good at perceiving and reasoning about flows — rates, recent changes — but poor at reasoning about stocks — levels, integrals — and this asymmetry is the source of a large literature of policy-misunderstanding findings, where reasoners confuse a falling rate with a falling level.
Mechanisms¶
- Stock-and-Flow Diagram
- There is a documented cognitive trap underneath this: even highly educated people systematically misread how a flow accumulates into a stock.
This sourceFinds that many well-educated adults fail simple stock–flow tasks by matching a stock’s trajectory to its inflow rather than integrating net flow.
- There is a documented cognitive trap underneath this: even highly educated people systematically misread how a flow accumulates into a stock.
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