It's About Time: Optimistic Predictions in Work and Love

Abstract

We review our research on predictions in two different domains: (a) people's estimates of how long they will take to complete various academic and everyday tasks and (b) forecasts by individuals in dating relationships of the future course of their romantic association. Our research indicates that people underestimate their completion times. Further, people appear to base their estimates on plan-based, future scenarios and they use attributional mechanisms to deny the relevance of their past failures to complete tasks on time. The optimistic bias disappears when observers forecast the completion times of other individuals (actors). Observers' estimates are no more accurate, however; instead observers exhibit a pessimistic bias, overestimating actors' task completion times. Compared to actors, observers make greater use of relevant previous experiences in generating their predictions; also while proposing future scenarios, observers are more likely to mention circumstances that might impede the actor's progress on the task. Our findings in the domain of love were generally consistent with those in the domain of work.