Are advice adhered to? 'Populist' versus 'activist' or 'systems analyst' advice

摘要

Laboratory experiments of decision making have revealed widespread misperceptions of nonlinear dynamic systems. A possible criticism of these experiments is that participants do not get the concrete policy advice they may receive in real situations. Here we repeat a previous experiment where we add two conflicting advice. A "populist" advice reflects typical misperceptions while a second and competing advice represents a near-to-optimal policy. The latter advice is in the wording of an "activist" in Treatment 1 and in the wording of a "systems analyst" in Treatment 2. The results suggest that concrete advice have some, however modest effects in complex systems. Strong allegations by an "activist" outperform stock and flow arguments by a "systems analyst". Improper mental models of the system remain a major problem.