People focus on optimistic scenarios and disregard pessimistic scenarios while predicting task completion times.

Abstract

Task completion plans normally resemble best-case scenarios and yield overly optimistic predictions of completion times. The authors induced participants to generate more pessimistic scenarios and examined completion predictions. Participants described a pessimistic scenario of task completion either alone or with an optimistic scenario. Pessimistic scenarios did not affect predictions or accuracy and were consistently rated less plausible than optimistic scenarios (Experiments 1-3). Experiment 4 independently manipulated scenario plausibility and optimism. Plausibility moderated the impact of optimistic, but not pessimistic, scenarios. Experiment 5 supported a motivational explanation of the tendency to disregard pessimistic scenarios regardless of their plausibility. People took pessimistic scenarios into account when predicting someone else's completion times. The authors conclude that pessimisticscenario generation may not be an effective debiasing technique for personal predictions. At one time or another, many of us have smirked while passing a vacant lot with a weather-beaten sign announcing that a new supermarket will be "Opening Soon!" Such unwarranted optimism also pervades people's predictions of their task completion times. People tend to underestimate how long they will take to finish academic, household, and laboratory tasks (Buehler,

Predictors and Consequences of Daily Goal Adaptation

“…It is arguably beyond the control of individuals if, for example, their supervisors give them new tasks to work on. Moreover, if underestimating task duration is indeed a general human tendency (e.g., Newby-Clark et al, 2000), then this underestimation is also difficult to control by individuals. Thus, our results indicate that goal adaptation is often caused by events that are most likely beyond people's control.…”

“…People seem to underestimate the duration of tasks because they focus too much on details of tasks at hand (i.e., on developing a plan for success) and not enough on possible events that could lead to trouble (Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 2002). Not only is this underestimation very common, but it is also remarkably resistant to interventions (e.g., Byram, 1997;Newby-Clark, Ross, Buehler, Koehler, & Griffin, 2000), which shows that it is a general human tendency that is difficult to control for individuals. For daily goal management, underestimating the duration of tasks means that people end up with less time than they originally thought.…”

Project managers’ overconfidence: how is risk reflected in anticipated project success?

“…In general, people tend to imagine positive outcomes for their plans, overwhelmingly ignoring possible negative scenarios in favor of wishful thinking (Newby-Clark et al 2000). In a project planning context, this tendency implies that project managers mostly work under the assumption that all their projects will succeed (Raz et al 2002), with the apparent belief that project risks will not occur or will have little impact on the project's success.…”

Trouver sur Internet une réponse à une question

“…Dans une seconde phase, nous avons spécialement travaillé sur l'impact de l'auto-efficacité sur les anticipations de performance (Byram, 1997, Newby-Clark et al, 2000. La tâche principale des participants consiste à prédire sa réussite ou son échec à trouver une réponse correcte sur Internet à quatre questions caractérisées par le fait qu'elle conduisent à une réponse unique.…”