Micro-worlds and the circular relation between people and their environment

In experiments with micro-worlds, subjects are required to interact with a computer simulation of a complex dynamic system for some period of time, bringing the simulation to some specified state and keeping it there. There are now a number of such simulations available. They allow one to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the field and make it possible to study the circular relation between people and their environment in the laboratory under controlled circumstances focusing on how people develop intentions and handle feedback, especially feedback delays, in complex systems. Research with micro-worlds has followed two strategies: an individual differences strategy and an experimental strategy. Although early studies did not succeed in finding relations between micro-world performance and psychometric variables, probably because the experiments did not yield reliable data, one now knows how to obtain such data and stable correlations between standard measures of intelligence and micro-world performance have now been established. The experimental approach has also yielded stable results, indicating some of the problems that people have when trying to cope with complex dynamic systems can be explained in terms of two general principles: relying too much on the information that is directly available (focus on the ‘here and now’) and lack of systems thinking (ignoring side effects). However, even though people do not always perform optimally (a difficult concept in dynamic systems), they often perform reasonably. Research with micro-worlds has, thus, led to a new approach to the study of decision-making: the focus on reasonable, rather than rational decision-making as a successful way of coping with complexity and dynamics.