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AbstractMany in the system dynamics community argue that children are natural systems thinkers. Here we study how middle school students and teachers think about everyday settings involving feedback, stocks and flows, time delays and nonlinearities, prior to any formal training in these concepts. We develop instruments to elicit understanding of systems concepts and test them with students and teachers from two middle schools in the U.S.A. We find, with some exceptions, generally limited intuitive systems thinking abilities. "Open‐loop" or one‐way causal thinking is common. Explanations lack references to time horizons and time delays. Significant misconceptions of stock and flow structures appear regardless of age. Teachers generally outperformed students, although one‐quarter of the students performed at the median level for teachers. We discuss the nature of students' and teachers' intuitive models of dynamic systems, explore potential barriers to understanding dynamic systems, and discuss implications for effective teaching of systems concepts. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We summarise our two sets of controlled experiments designed to see if single-sex classes within coeducational environments modify students' risk-taking attitudes. In Booth and Nolen (2012b), subjects are in years 10 and 11, while in Booth, Cardona-Sosa and Nolen (2014), they are first-year university students randomly assigned to single-sex and coed classes. While on average females are significantly less likely than men to make risky choices, on exposure to single-sex environments they behave the same as the males. Thus part of the observed gender difference in behavior under uncertainty found in previous studies might reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.

In almost all European Union countries, the gender wage gap is increasing across the wages distribution. In this lecture I briefly survey some recent studies aiming to explain why apparently identical women and men receive such different returns and focus especially on those incorporating pyschological factors as an explanation of the gender gap. Research areas with high potential returns to further analysis are identified. Several examples from my own recent experimental work with Patrick Nolen are also presented. These try to distinguish between the role of nature and nurture in affecting behavioural differences between men and women that might lead to gender wage gaps.

AbstractChildren's social and emotional adjustment at age 8 were examined in relation to attachment security, parenting style, setting conditions, and social and emotional adjustment at age 4. Seventy‐nine children participated in videotaped interaction sessions with their mothers and with unfamiliar peers at the two ages. Data were derived from videotape coding, mother questionnaires, and child sociometric ratings. Results indicted that internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and social engagement were related at the two ages. After removing the variance due to the relationship between child behaviors at the two ages, a comparison of mother‐child relationship predictors indicated that attachment security at age 4 was the strongest predictor of internalizing problems and social engagement/acceptance at age 8, while maternal style was the strongest predictor of externalizing difficulties. Results point to the importance of both aspects of the mother‐child relationship, and indicate that the nature of family and peer links may vary depending upon the specific social domain assessed.