Heuristics in dynamic decision making: Coping with thetime constants of a dynamic task by doing something else

摘要

Laboratory studies have shown that people cannot handle the timeconstants in dynamic tasks. Yet they obviously cope with such taskswith some success outside the laboratory. This study is one in a seriesof studies that examine the hypothesis that people cope by relying onheuristics that allow them to simplify the task. The heuristic studiedhere was that of relying on frequency differences, I.e., what Reason(1990) calls frequency gambling. It examines the effects of varying therelative frequency of scenarios that require different responding, andwhere relying on frequency rather than learning the actual time constantswill lead to some success. The results show that the participantsdid not learn the time constants, but the heuristic used did not seem tobe frequency as much as a heuristic that could be called “better safethan sorry”, I.e., they sent out more than the minimum necessary assetsto fight the fire. A variant of this heuristic involving rapid and massiveresponding has also been identified in earlier studies.