2.5 Stability, resistance and balancing feedback
2.5 Stability, resistance and balancing feedback
Key Points
- Balancing or negative feedback seeks stability and imposes limits.
- Balancing feedback operates whenever there is a goal-oriented behavior.
- A balancing loop always has four elements: a corrective action, a performance variable, a target or goal and a gap between your target and your actual performance. The difference between the performance variable and your goal stimulates corrective action until the gap disappears.
- There are many examples of balancing feedback: learning, balance, business objectives, strikes, thermostats and other self-adjusting machines, regulatory processes in our body.
- Balancing feedback often combines with reinforcing feedback to create more complex behaviors in the real world.
1. Watch the video
2. Do the exercise
Draw a balancing feedback loop. This exercise will help you practice drawing balancing loops.
The City of Los Angeles has set a number of short, medium and long-term goals for improving the city’s water, energy, climate, transportation, green jobs, housing and wages over the next 20 years. Read this online article to learn more. Your task is to draw a balancing feedback loop to describe how L.A. is moving towards one of its goals.
Hint: A balancing loop is made up of four elements – a performance variable, a goal, a gap and a corrective action. You should start by identifying these variables and then add other variables as needed to make your story as clear as possible. The document “Seeing and drawing balancing feedback” in the additional materials may help.
A suggested worked solution is provided in the additional materials section.
3. Study the lesson readings
Seeing and drawing balancing feedback. A short text that explains how to identify and draw a balancing feedback loop.
Additional materials
- Exercise – example solution. This is a suggested worked solution for the additional exercise “Draw a balancing feedback loop”.
- Video sources and bibliography. The web sites, attributions and sources cited in the video “Stability, resistance and balancing feedback”.
- The video transcript.