Title
Accuracy, Error, and Bias in Predictions for Real Versus Hypothetical Events
Department/School
Marketing; Management
Date of this version
2006
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.583
Abstract
Participants made predictions about performance on tasks that they did or did not expect to complete. In three experiments, participants in task-unexpected conditions were unrealistically optimistic: They overestimated how well they would perform, often by a large margin, and their predictions were not correlated with their performance. By contrast, participants assigned to task-expected conditions made predictions that were not only less optimistic but strikingly accurate. Consistent with predictions from construal level theory, data from a fourth experiment suggest that it is the uncertainty associated with hypothetical tasks, and not a lack of cognitive processing, that frees people to make optimistic prediction errors. Unrealistic optimism, when it occurs, may be truly unrealistic; however, it may be less ubiquitous than has been previously suggested.
Volume
91
Issue
4
Published in
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Citation/Other Information
Armor, D. A., & Sackett, A. M. (2006). Accuracy, error, and bias in predictions for real versus hypothetical events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 583–600. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.583