事件时间估计偏差理论述评

Why People Underestimate the Time of Completing a Task:A Review

人们总是倾向低估完成某一任务的时间。计划谬误理论认为,时间低估倾向的原因是人们估计时间时忽视过去完成类似任务的经验,过于关注理想的任务计划和任务情景,从而导致乐观的时间估计。但是基于该理论的一些提高时间估计精确性的策略没有达到预期效果。针对这种不足,记忆偏差理论认为,人们利用的时间记忆带有偏差,从而导致偏差的时间估计。两个理论之间引起一些争论,但如果从解释水平理论的角度可以找到其相通之处。

People frequently underestimate how long it will take them to complete a task. The view of planning fallacy theory is that during the prediction process, people incorrectly use or ignore their memories of how long similar tasks have taken in the past because they take an overly optimistic outlook. Memory bias theory holds a different explanation： People base predictions of future duration on their memories of how long past events have taken, but these memories are systematic underestimates of past duration. People appear to underestimate event duration because they underestimate past event duration. Although there are some argues between these two theories, from the view of Construal Level Theory, theorists can find the sameness between them, they can coexist.