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- Title
Public and health professionals' misconceptions about the dynamics of body weight gain/loss.
- Authors
Abdel‐Hamid, Tarek; Ankel, Felix; Battle‐Fisher, Michele; Gibson, Bryan; Gonzalez‐Parra, Gilberto; Jalali, Mohammad; Kaipainen, Kirsikka; Kalupahana, Nishan; Karanfil, Ozge; Marathe, Achla; Martinson, Brian; McKelvey, Karma; Sarbadhikari, Suptendra Nath; Pintauro, Stephen; Poucheret, Patrick; Pronk, Nicolaas; Qian, Ying; Sazonov, Edward; Oorschot, Kim Van; Venkitasubramanian, Akshay
- Abstract
Human body energy storage operates as a stock-and-flow system with inflow (food intake) and outflow (energy expenditure). In spite of the ubiquity of stock-and-flow structures, evidence suggests that human beings fail to understand stock accumulation and rates of change, a difficulty called the stock-flow failure. This study examines the influence of health care training and cultural background in overcoming stock-flow failure. A standardized protocol assessed lay people's and health care professionals' ability to apply stock-and-flow reasoning to infer the dynamics of weight gain/loss during the holiday season (621 subjects from seven countries). Our results indicate that both types of subjects exhibited systematic errors indicative of use of erroneous heuristics. Indeed 76% of lay subjects and 71% of health care professionals failed to understand the simple dynamic impact of energy intake and energy expenditure on body weight. Stock-flow failure was found across cultures and was not improved by professional health training. The problem of stock-flow failure as a transcultural global issue with education and policy implications is discussed. Copyright © 2014 System Dynamics Society
- Subjects
BODY weight; WEIGHT gain; WEIGHT loss; INGESTION; MEDICAL care research
- Publication
System Dynamics Review (Wiley), 2014, Vol 30, Issue 1/2, p58
- ISSN
0883-7066
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/sdr.1517