Systems thinking and the cobra effect

Barry Newell, Christopher Doll

    Research output: Contribution to specialist publicationGeneral Article

    Abstract

    A famous anecdote describes a scheme the British Colonial Government implemented in India in an attempt to control the population of venomous cobras that were plaguing the citizens of Delhi that offered a bounty to be paid for every dead cobra brought to the administration officials. The policy initially appeared successful, intrepid snake catchers claiming their bounties and fewer cobras being seen in the city. Yet, instead of tapering off over time, there was a steady increase in the number of dead cobras being presented for bounty payment each month. Nobody knew why. Right from birth, we start to see connections in the world around us. A meal cures hunger; sleep relieves tiredness; problems have causes, and eliminating the cause will yield a solution. What we are doing (whether we know it or not) is forming mental models of the way that cause and effect are related. Our mental models exert an incredibly powerful influence on our perceptions and thoughts. They determine what we see, tell us what events are important, help us to make sense of our experiences, and provide convenient cognitive shortcuts to speed our thinking. However, they can lead us astray. Most of our causeeffect experiences involve very simple, direct relationships. As a result, we tend to think in terms of linear behaviour double the cause to double the effect, halve the cause to halve the effect. In reality, as we will see with the cobras of Delhi, the world is often more complex than we realise.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages1-6pp
    No.2015.09.16
    Specialist publicationOur World Web Magazine
    Publication statusPublished - 2015

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