Why Change Over Time Is Difficult and What We Can Do to Aid Decision-Making?

This webpage provides:

§         Why Is Change Over Time Is Difficult to Understand?

§         How Do We Interpret Linear and Non-Linear Growth?

§         Why Does Dealing with Time Require “Frequent and Telling Feedback”?

§         What Experts and Laypeople Have in Common in “Dealing with Time and Recognizing Temporal Patterns”?

§         What 5 Methods Help Us in “Dealing with Time and Recognizing Temporal Patterns”?

 

Why Is Change Over Time Is Difficult to Understand?

We are not wired to notice change over time. A common sense example sometimes helps. If you had left your living room unchanged during years of heavy use, you might not notice the frayed spots on the couch; however, if someone moved that couch to the other side of the room, you’d probably notice instantly. Bolded below are the two vulnerabilities with understanding time.

We live and act in a four-dimensional system. In addition to the three dimensions of space, this system includes the fourth dimension of time, which moves in one direction, and that direction is toward the future…. We rarely have trouble dealing with configurations in space. If we’re not entirely sure of what we’re looking at, we can take another look and resolve our uncertainty. We can normally look at forms in space again and again and in this way precisely determine their particular configuration. That is not true of configurations in time. A time configuration is available for examination only in retrospect. …

 

Because we are constantly presented with whole spatial configurations, we readily think in such terms.… Our experience with spatial forms also gives us great intuition about the “missing pieces”….

 

By contrast, we often overlook time configurations and treat successive steps in a temporal development as individual events…. In contrast to the rich set of spatial concepts we can use to understand patters in space, we seem to rely on only a few mechanism of prognostication to gain insight into the future.

 

The primary such mechanism is extrapolation from the moment. In other words, those aspects of the present that anger, worry, or delight us the most will play a key role in our predictions of the future….

 

Two factors come together in extrapolations from the moment: [bullets added]

§         first, the limited focus on a notable feature of the present
[Example from page 110: “Fixation” on this “brings with it the danger that too much significance is ascribed to present circumstances.” – A Hong Kong tourist in typhoon season expects “the colony’s imminent water end.” On the other hand, a resident sees it “as unremarkable in the context of an entire year’s weather.”]

§         and, second, extension of the perceived trend in a more or less linear and “monotone” fashion (that is, without allowing for any change in direction).
[Example from page 110: “”Fixation on linear future development may prevent us from anticipating changes in direction and pace.”]

 

Our ultimate concern … is how people form their ideas of the future. If we can identify the typical difficulties people have in dealing with time and in recognizing temporal patterns, we can suggest ways to overcome these difficulties and to improve temporal intuition. (pp. 107-110)

How Do We Interpret Linear and Non-Linear Growth?

Children, and many an adult, will be amazed at the answer to the following problem. There is one water lily growing in a pond with a surface area of 130,000 square feet. In early spring, the lily has one pad, and each lily pad has a surface area of one square foot. After a week, the lily has two pads, after the following week, four pads. After sixteen weeks the pond is half covered. How much longer will it take before the whole pond is covered? [The answer: if constant growth, “only one more week.” Dörner covers other examples, including AIDS, and experiments.]

 

A quantity is said to be growing “exponentially” when its value at any time … is its previous value multiplied by a particular number, the same number each time. … In a linear process, a quantity increases by the same amount, not the same multiple, at each step. … A number of psychological experiments have demonstrated that an incapacity to deal with nonlinear time configurations is a general phenomenon.

 

Clearly, … people tend to badly misjudge non-linear [exponential] growth. (pp. 110, 111-112, 116-117)

Why Does Dealing with Time Require “Frequent and Telling Feedback”?

Dealing with time becomes more difficult when there are delays between our actions to modify the system and the results of those actions.

When we have to cope with systems that do not operate in accordance with very simple temporal patterns, we run into major difficulties. (p. 128) [If you want more detail on these experiments and the “categories” of hypotheses developed by the participants, click here.]

To try to understand how the system works and how our actions have had consequences, we tend to try to develop hypotheses:

The difficulties the participants had in coming to a correct understanding of the basically simple laws governing the system emerge clearly in the hypotheses the participants developed about the connection between the temperature and the regulator settings [one of the computer simulations]…. [One of the major “categories” of false thinking is the] “magical” hypothesis based on “local experience.” (pp. 134-135)

 

[In simplest terms, “local experience” is assuming what happened where you are after your action is a result of your action and not something else in the system.]

[To develop useful hypotheses, feedback to the participants must be “frequent and telling.” (p. 136). These examples may help:]

§         “frequent”
Example of a problem with “frequent” feedback from p. 134: “[I]n situations where feedback is not frequent and where the intervals between action and feedback are longer, we can expect ritualizations to wax luxuriant.”

§         “telling” feedback
Example of a problem with “telling” feedback from p. 135: “[I]t is not really the system’s behavior in time but their own behavior the participants are focusing on….”
Instead, participants needed to focus on “external conditions” and on “what is happening in the outside world.” (p. 136)

What Experts and Laypeople Have in Common in “Dealing with Time and Recognizing Temporal Patterns”?

[Dörner covers that experts in a field can make errors in projections, not just laypeople. He notes that with both “feeling still comes into play.” (pp. 126-128) He concludes the section with this statement:]

What I am saying about professional prediction should not be misunderstood, however, as an attack on prognosticators. I do not know how good or bad business or industry predictions are in general. I want only to call attention to the psychological weaknesses [those “feelings”] to which even rational professional predictions is prone. (p. 128)

What 5 Methods Help Us in “Dealing with Time and Recognizing Temporal Patterns”?

Dörner provides many methods to help us understand and act usefully with systems. These are ones specific to the challenge of dealing with time. Also see his methods with interrelated variables and his methods with analogy and other basics

1.    After acting, wait to measure before acting again. Possible application of the method: a pilot project with a small sample and with careful measurement before implementing something with the entire population.

[Although testing of hypotheses is useful at all cases.]

The good participants differed from the bad ones, however, in how often they tested their hypotheses. The bad participants failed to do this. For them, to propose a hypothesis was to understand reality; testing that hypothesis was unnecessary. Instead of generating hypotheses, they generated “truths.” (p. 24)

[With complex changes in time, greater sophistication is needed testing hypotheses. Dörner focuses on the success of a “good participant” who tries a setting and waits to see what happens before changing the setting again.]

 

Participant 27a always waits a fairly long time before adjusting the regulator, and as a consequence, slowly develops a feel for the proper setting. He gradually lowers the settings and finally succeeds in bring the storeroom down to the desired temperature. (pp.. 130-131)

2.    Plan your process to provide “’frequent and telling’ feedback.” Possible application of the method: Make sure to plan measurement that occurs regularly and that reveals what is happening as broadly as possible. With education reform, measure all parts of the system, including what “magical” hypotheses students are developing.

The difficulties the participants had in coming to a correct understanding of the basically simple laws governing the system emerge clearly in the hypotheses the participants developed about the connection between the temperature and the regulator settings [one of the computer simulations]…. [One of the major “categories” of false thinking is the] “magical” hypothesis based on “local experience.” (pp. 134-135)

Our participants developed rituals [based on “magical hypotheses” when removed from “frequent and telling feedback.”] [I]n situations where feedback is not frequent and where the intervals between action and feedback are longer, we can expect ritualizations to wax luxuriant. (pp. 136-137)

3.     Measure beyond the first years. Possible application of the method: Make sure to plan measurement on realistic outcomes of all parts of the system to occur initially and thereafter.

[Do not assume] that the absence of immediately obvious negative effects meant that correct measures had been taken.” (p. 18)

[I]n the real world, the consequences of our mistakes are slow in developing and may occur far from where we took action. After a long delay or at a great distance, we may not even recognize them as the results of our behavior. [bold added] (p. 195-196)

4.    Plan your process to notice the whole over time as well as the parts. Possible application of the method: Use plotting of relationships within the system (as with the charts at this website) or use plotting of data to reveal trends (with Dörner’s frequently being points of data).

The dynamics inherent in systems make it important to understand developmental tendencies. We cannot content ourselves with observing and analyzing situations at any single moment but must instead try to determine where the whole system is heading over time. For many people this proves to be an extremely difficult task. [bold added] (p. 40)

5.    Frequently, issues with time are discussed in terms of numbers. Dörner suggests this caution:

… we cannot interpret numbers solely on the basis of their size. To understand what they mean, we have to take into account the process that produce them, and that is not always easy. (p. 125)

If You Want More Detail on Pages 128-136: What Do We Do When We Must Cope with More Than “Very Simple Temporal Patterns”?

Dörner provides extensive examples of errors and details when people must deal with complex patterns in time.

When we have to cope with systems that do not operate in accordance with very simple temporal patterns, we run into major difficulties. (p. 128)

 

[Dörner uses an experiment with participants having the challenge of needing to save food supplies by adjusting a “residential thermostat that need a certain amount of time before it brings a room to a constant temperature.” They had instructions for the thermostat and those instructions were accurate. The experiment includes recordings of the “participants thinking out loud during the experiment.” (pp. 128-134) He identifies the hypotheses in “three categories”:]

§         The first and largest category consists of “magical” hypotheses. The participants say, for example, “Twenty-eight is a good number”…. “Odd numbers are good.” “You shouldn’t use multiples of ten”….
Magical hypotheses are probably the result of overgeneralizations on the basis of local experience. [The participants tried a number and the temperature changed.] Given the nature of the system, this intervention probably had little bearing on the effect observed. But the participant is pleased. He notes the “connection” between his setting and the temperature change in the right direction, and he generalizes from this. (p. 134)

§         The hypothesis in the second category look something like this: “Increments of five and ten have different effects.” …   (p. 135) [Dörner notes this category results “rituals.”] All we have to do is execute the rituals correctly. At this point, our actions are almost completely divorced from external conditions. We no longer pay any attention to what is happening in the outside world. All that matters is the ritual….(p. 136)

§         [T]he third mode: “You have to set the regulator high to lower the temperature.” “High settings produce low temperatures….”(p. 136) The participants who voiced these hypotheses no longer trusted the instructions or the experiment director but suspected instead they they were the victims of some malevolent deception.” (p. 136)

 

[To summarize, Dörner notes that these participants had data in “short lag times.”] This means that the tendencies we observed in the storeroom experiment will be much more pronounced in real situations. In the real world, people tend even more to generalize from local experience, to ritualize, and to believe that no rationally comprehensible principle is at work and that they are the dupes of some mean-spirited practical joke.” (p. 137)

 

If you want more quotations from The Logic of Failure

For who Dörner is and the basics about systems and systems thinking, click here. For all of the quotations from The Logic of Failure and these topics, click here:

 

 

 

 

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Last Updated:

2012 06/04

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