At 11:20 am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, five-hundred or so freshman all rush to lunch. Although people may try various tactics to avoid the painstaking waiting in line, their predicted human behavior ultimately only make it worse. Human behaviors, like the ones seen in the lunch rush, are explored in depth using various models by Thomas Schelling in his novel, Micromotives and Macrobehavior. Thomas Schelling first explores the cyclical model, which shows a repeating up and down behavior that eventually settles at an unsatisfying outcome; this model can be applied to a variety of human behaviors including the unsatisfying result of the freshman studies lunch rush.
All the models Schelling introduces have unique features that make them…show more content… All the examples Schelling shares start with some ideal outcome and the ideal outcome in the lunch rush would be to distribute the lunch goers evenly throughout the time allotted for lunch. However, also like the other models, this goal is initially overshot. Everyone initially rushes out of freshman studies in the hopes of beating everyone else to Warch, thus overshooting the desired distribution and creating a huge line. The next day, not wanting to relive the horrors of the line, most people wait a bit, but waiting only delays and creates a new rush at a different time. This cyclical time shift continues creating an undesirable outcome. In tune with that, the influence of other people’s actions ultimately makes the outcome. Everyone wants to avoid the rush, so everyone goes at a different time, and with their friends, so eventually everyone still goes with each other just at oscillating times. Overall, the human phenomenon that is the freshman studies lunch rush illustrates the overshooting/undershooting, the less than desirable outcome, and the individual influence that is laid out in the Thomas Schelling’s cyclical
