The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Quake simulation

Via Bruce Schneier, an interesting experiment at Wharton School of Business showed students have a bias towards short-term gain—even in the face of certain disaster:

It’s not like the students don’t know what’s coming, either. When asked if they understand what’s going on, they always say, yeah, they get it: they’re about to get hit by an earthquake. So if it’s not stupidity or ignorance, why do the students keep losing? Kunreuther and Meyer believe the game demonstrates a psychological bias toward short-term maximization instead of long-term planning—a psychological bias all humans share.

Meyer has tried out the Quake simulation with groups of corporate executives, and the results are the same. The players always see the quake coming, and they always “have a difficult time translating that belief that it’s going to happen to a short-term action”—much the same way, in fact, that the government of Haiti failed to adequately prepare for the possibility of a major earthquake.

Though I wonder: since the experiment targeted business students and corporate executives, might there be some bias? I'd like to see the experiment repeated with a larger, more random sample.

Anyway, the results might explain how, for the next few days, I'm locking myself in my apartment to finish two exams and a research paper, all of which are due Monday.

Comments are closed