Title

Actors, observers, and the estimation of task duration

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Abstract

People are often wrong in estimating both how long tasks have taken in the past and how long they will take in the future. Bias could be due to factors such as task involvement, an individual's engagement or motivation in completing the task, or aspects of the task such as its relative duration or memory storage size associated with it. We examined time estimation bias in actors (likely to experience high levels of task involvement) and observers (likely to experience low levels of task involvement) for both predictions of and memory of task duration. Results suggest that bias appears to be due to memory storage size rather than to involvement with the task. © 2013 Copyright The Experimental Psychology Society.

Volume

66

Issue

1

First Page

121

Last Page

137

DOI

10.1080/17470218.2012.699973

ISSN

17470218

E-ISSN

17470226

PubMed ID

22928697

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