title: Accuracy, error, and bias in predictions for real versus hypothetical events.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, USA. darmor@sciences.sdsu.edu
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Armor
authors.forename: Aaron M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Sackett
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D015982:Bias; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011584:Psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012932:Social Facilitation