Myopic Biases in Strategic Social Prediction: Why Deadlines Put Everyone Under More Pressure Than Everyone Else

Five experiments document biases in the way people predict the outcomes of interdependent social situations and show both how focusing can account for these effects and also how perspective taking can reduce their biasing influence.

Abstract

Five experiments document biases in the way people predict the outcomes of interdependent social situations. Participants predicted that situational constraints would restrain their own behavior more than it would the behavior of others, even in situations where everyone faced identical constraints. When anticipating the effects of deadlines on outcomes of negotiations, participants predicted that deadlines would hinder their performance more than it would hinder the performance of others. The results shed light on the psychological processes by which people predict the outcomes of and select strategies in strategic social interaction. They extend prior findings, such as people believing themselves to be below average on difficult tasks, to highly interdependent situations. Furthermore, the article shows both how focusing can account for these effects and also how perspective taking can reduce their biasing influence.