Predicting the near and distant future.

Abstract

Four studies investigated individuals' confidence in predicting near future and distant future outcomes. Study 1 found that participants were more confident in theory-based predictions of psychological experiments when these experiments were expected to take place in the more distant future. Studies 2-4 examined participants' confidence in predicting their performance on near and distant future tests. These studies found that in predicting their more distant future performance, participants disregarded the format of the questions (e.g., multiple choice vs. open ended) and relied, instead, on their perceived general knowledge (e.g., history knowledge). Together, the present studies demonstrate that predictions of the more distant future are based on relatively abstract information. Individuals feel more confident in predicting the distant future than the near future when the predictions concern outcomes that are implied by relatively abstract information.Keywords: time distance, construal level theory (CLT), prediction, confidence, overconfidence Effective planning often requires predicting outcomes that are expected in the relatively distant future. For example, planning a vacation often requires predicting a long time in advance the weather conditions at the destination of the trip. Similarly, class registration requires predicting a long time in advance whether the selected courses would live up to one's expectations. The question then is whether and how temporal distance from future outcomes affects individuals' predictions about those outcomes. Does temporal distance affect the confidence with which predictions are made? Temporal distance from future outcomes ordinarily reduces the accuracy with which those outcomes can be predicted. Are individuals sensitive to these temporal differences in accuracy?There is a large amount of research on how individuals predict the future and the factors that influence those predictions (see, e.g., Griffin, Dunning, & Ross, 1990;Kahneman & Lovallo, 1991;Sherman, 1980;Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000). However, this research has typically compared predictions with actual outcomes. There is relatively little research on how temporal distance from future outcomes affects predictions about those outcomes. In an early study addressing this issue, Nisan (1972) asked participants to estimate their chances of correctly answering a random question from a test they expected to take on the same day or 4 weeks later. The results showed that greater temporal distance enhanced expectancy of success and risk-taking, particularly by individuals who were success rather than failure oriented. More recently, Gilovich, Medvec, and their colleagues (Gilovich, Kerr, & Medvec, 1993;Savitsky, Medvec, Charlton, & Gilovich, 1998) reported a series of studies showing that individuals had higher performance expectancies for distant future tasks as compared with near future tasks, a phenomenon they labeled "cold feet." For example, participants expected to perform better on a variety of...

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