Using Our Past to Predict Our Future: Applying Reference Class Forecasting to Debias Individual Project Completion Predictions

People often predict that they will finish projects sooner than they actually do, i.e., exhibit the planning fallacy (e.g., Buehler et al., 2010). This bias has important consequences for everyday life, including failure to meet deadlines, taking on too many projects, and increased stress. Several solutions have been proposed, including interventions which ask individuals to take an “outside view” (e.g., Kahneman & Lovallo, 1993), such as using information from past completion times to make predictions for a current project (e.g., Buehler et al., 1994). In this work, we take a novel approach to helping individuals use past project information: recalling past completion times in reference to predictions (i.e., “how much later did I finish compared to my original expectation?”) as opposed to deadlines (i.e., how close to the deadline did I finish?”) and reference class forecasting (RCF; Lovallo and Kahnemann, 2003). In Study 1 and 2 (N = 322), we asked participants to report their planning fallacy beliefs, i.e., how many days after or before their predictions they believed they finished past projects. Although people on average reported finishing projects slightly later than predicted, awareness of this bias did not lead to less optimistic predictions for a current project. In Study 3-6 (N = 1,425), we instructed participants to recall relevant past project completion times using RCF, a technique that has been successful in reducing the planning fallacy for large-scale infrastructure projects (e.g., Flyvbjerg, 2008; Flyvbjerg et al., 2009), but has not been tested in individual, personal projects. Although our results were not completely consistent, we found evidence that RCF led to less optimistically biased completion predictions in three of the four studies. Overall, our work suggests that RCF, especially with past completion times recalled in reference to predictions, is a promising strategy for helping people make more accurate completion predictions for their individual personal projects

Plans as Emotion Regulation Tools? Examining the Consequences of Planning on Affect

Psychologists have studied extensively the consequences of planning for motivation and task performance, but little work has examined whether plan-making serves another function, that of helping us feel better about the yet-to-be completed task. In the present research, we examined whether making plans for completing a future task positively impacts feelings related to that task. In three studies, we tested the possibility that planning decreases negative emotions about the task planned for, and whether some types of planning are more beneficial for this than others. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were asked to nominate an important task they had yet to complete and that they had felt concerned about completing lately, and then instructed to either make a plan to complete the task using one of the specified planning types, or were not asked to make a plan. Participants then rated their feelings about the task on twenty emotions adjectives (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). In Study 3, participants were prompted to think about an upcoming exam, and then either (1) made a specific plan to prepare for it followed by giving affect ratings (experimental condition), or (2) rated their affect first and then made a specific plan (control condition). The results of Study 1 (N = 144) supported our hypothesis – following planning, mental simulation planners reported lower levels of negative affect than implementation intention planners and no plan controls. No differences were found for positive affect. These results were not replicated in Study 2 (N = 133) or Study 3 (N = 147), where feelings about the task did not differ depending on whether participants planned or not, or planning type. Overall, our findings did not yield consistent evidence that planning for an important future task has immediate affective benefits

Gender differences in responses to moral dilemmas:a process dissociation analysis

The principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on its consistency with moral norms; the principle of utilitarianism implies that the morality of an action depends on its consequences. Previous research suggests that deontological judgments are shaped by affective processes, whereas utilitarian judgments are guided by cognitive processes. The current research used process dissociation (PD) to independently assess deontological and utilitarian inclinations in women and men. A meta-analytic re-analysis of 40 studies with 6,100 participants indicated that men showed a stronger preference for utilitarian over deontological judgments than women when the two principles implied conflicting decisions (d = 0.52). PD further revealed that women exhibited stronger deontological inclinations than men (d = 0.57), while men exhibited only slightly stronger utilitarian inclinations than women (d = 0.10). The findings suggest that gender differences in moral dilemma judgments are due to differences in affective responses to harm rather than cognitive evaluations of outcomes

Clarifying gender differences in moral dilemma judgments: The complementary roles of harm aversion and action aversion

Moral dilemmas entail situations where decisions consistent with deontological principles (following moral rules) conflict with decisions consistent with utilitarian principles (maximizing overall outcomes). Past work employing process dissociation (PD) clarified that gender differences in utilitarianism are modest, but women are substantially more deontological than men. However, deontological judgments confound two motivations: harm aversion and action aversion. The current work presents a mega-analysis of eight studies (N = 1,965) using PD to assess utilitarian and deontological response tendencies both when deontology entails inaction and when it requires action, to assess the independent contributions of harm aversion and action aversion. Results replicate and clarify past findings: Women scored higher than men on deontological tendencies, and this difference was enhanced when the deontological choice required refraining from harmful action rather than acting to prevent harm. That is, gender differences in deontological inclinations are caused by both harm aversion and action aversion

Consequences, norms, and generalized inaction in moral dilemmas: the CNI model of moral decision-making

Research on moral dilemma judgments has been fundamentally shaped by the distinction between utilitarianism and deontology. According to the principle of utilitarianism, the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consequences; the principle of deontology states that the moral status of behavioral options depends on their consistency with moral norms. To identify the processes underlying utilitarian and deontological judgments, researchers have investigated responses to moral dilemmas that pit one principle against the other (e.g., trolley problem). However, the conceptual meaning of responses in this paradigm is ambiguous, because the central aspects of utilitarianism and deontology—consequences and norms—are not manipulated. We illustrate how this shortcoming undermines theoretical interpretations of empirical findings and describe an alternative approach that resolves the ambiguities of the traditional paradigm. Expanding on this approach, we present a multinomial model that allows researchers to quantify sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action irrespective of consequences and norms (I) in responses to moral dilemmas. We present 8 studies that used this model to investigate the effects of gender, cognitive load, question framing, and psychopathy on moral dilemma judgments. The findings obtained with the proposed CNI model offer more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments, calling for a reassessment of dominant theoretical assumptions

Understanding responses to moral dilemmas:deontological inclinations, utilitarian inclinations, and general action tendencies

The first principle, often associated with the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, emphasizes the irrevocable universality of rights and duties. According to the principle of deontology, the moral status of an action is derived from its consistency with context-independent norms. One of the most prominent examples of such theories is Greene's dual-process theory of moral judgment. The central assumption of the theory is that deontological and utilitarian judgments have their roots in two distinct psychological processes. Applied to moral dilemma research, incongruent dilemmas pit the principle of deontology against the principle of utilitarianism, such that a given action is acceptable from a utilitarian view but unacceptable from a deontological view. To overcome the first problem the nonindependence of deontological and utilitarian judgments Conway and Gawronski developed a process dissociation (PD) model to disentangle the independent contributions of deontological and utilitarian inclinations to overt moral judgments

Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments: an analysis using the CNI model

Effects of incidental emotions on moral dilemma judgments have garnered interest because they demonstrate the context-dependent nature of moral decision-making. Six experiments (N = 727) investigated the effects of incidental happiness, sadness, and anger on responses in moral dilemmas that pit the consequences of a given action for the greater good (i.e., utilitarianism) against the consistency of that action with moral norms (i.e., deontology). Using the CNI model of moral decision-making, we further tested whether the three kinds of emotions shape moral dilemma judgments by influencing (a) sensitivity to consequences, (b) sensitivity to moral norms, or (c) general preference for inaction versus action regardless of consequences and moral norms (or some combination of the three). Incidental happiness reduced sensitivity to moral norms without affecting sensitivity to consequences or general preference for inaction versus action. Incidental sadness and incidental anger did not show any significant effects on moral dilemma judgments. The findings suggest a central role of moral norms in the contribution of emotional responses to moral dilemma judgments, requiring refinements of dominant theoretical accounts and supporting the value of formal modeling approaches in providing more nuanced insights into the determinants of moral dilemma judgments