RAB in Commonplace but Complex Tasks

Abstract

In Chapters 5 through 8, we examined people’s behavior in several specific resource-allocation situations. In Chapter 5, we examined resource-allocation behavior under conditions of Certainty, Risk, and Uncertainty, where fluctuations in resources were possible, finding that participants performed best under Certainty and worst under Uncertainty. We saw that people were capable of intuitively solving simple technical two-dimensional resource-allocation problems, initially finding solutions that were 80–90% of the optimal solution that could be obtained with LP. With practice many participants’ scores improved to 95% of the optimal LP solution. Chapter 5 also discussed the equal-scheduling tendency where participants would tend to schedule equal use of the two alternatives provided in the scenario of the problem, even when the optimal solution called for unequal scheduling. Participants also showed a tendency not to take precautions against losses but instead to react after a loss had occurred.