The effect of global/local thinking manipulation on stock-flow performance: A lab experiment

Understanding the relationship between global-local thinking and stock-flow reasoning is essential for improving decision-making in dynamic systems. Stock-flow systems consist of accumulations that change over time due to inflows and outflows, which are critical to managing systems in fields like inventory control and capacity planning. Despite the importance of these processes, research consistently shows that even well-educated individuals make systematic errors when reasoning about stock-flow dynamics. While much attention has been given to understanding these failures, less is known about the role of cognitive styles in improving stock-flow performance. This paper investigates how manipulating global versus local thinking impacts participants' ability to accurately reason about stock-flow systems. Using a map task to prime thinking styles, participants were asked to focus on either the broader structure (global) or finer details (local), and a control group received neutral tasks. Following this, participants completed a stock-flow task to measure their comprehension of inflows and outflows. In total, ۹۰ individuals participated in the study. Results demonstrate that individuals primed for global thinking performed significantly better than those primed for local thinking, supporting the hypothesis that a global perspective enhances understanding of dynamic systems.

کلیدواژه ها:

Global-local processing ، Stock-flow failure ، Cognitive reflection