Abstract

People often underestimate their completion times of future tasks or events. The phenomenon of optimistic time prediction is called the planning fallacy. Prior research has demonstrated that individuals are less likely to make optimistic predictions about events that are temporally relatively close. Furthermore, events involving relatively more effort are perceived as temporally closer. Hence, we recruited 102 undergraduates and conducted an experiment to test whether a high-effort assignment would reduce perceived temporal distance to the deadline and, thereby, reduce the planning fallacy. The results showed that participants in the high-effort condition perceived the deadline as temporally closer, generated less optimistic time predictions and were less likely to commit the planning fallacy. The inverse relationship between the amount of required effort and the likelihood of committing the planning fallacy was mediated by perceived temporal distance to the deadline. Our findings provide an innovative approach for reducing the planning fallacy in students.

摘要

人们经常低估他们完成未来任务或事件的时间。乐观的时间预测现象称为计划谬误。先前的研究表明，个人不太可能对时间上相对接近的事件做出乐观的预测。此外，涉及相对更多努力的事件被认为在时间上更接近。因此，我们招募了 102 名本科生并进行了一项实验，以测试一项高努力的作业是否会减少到截止日期的感知时间距离，从而减少计划谬误。结果表明，高努力条件下的参与者认为截止日期在时间上更接近，产生的时间预测不太乐观，并且不太可能犯下计划谬误。所需工作量与犯下计划谬误的可能性之间的反比关系是由感知到的时间距离到最后期限的距离所调节的。我们的研究结果为减少学生的计划谬误提供了一种创新方法。