The time-saving bias: Judgements, cognition and perception

Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2013, Vol 8, Issue 4

Abstract

Biases in people’s judgments of time saved by increasing the speed of an activity have been studied mainly with hypothetical scenarios (Svenson, 2008). The present study asked whether the classic time-saving bias persists as a perceptual bias when we control the speed of an activity and assess the perceived time elapsed at different speeds. Specifically, we investigated the time-saving bias in a driving simulator. Each participant was asked to first drive a distance at a given speed and then drive the same distance again at the speed she or he judged necessary to gain exactly three minutes in travel time compared to the first trip. We found that that the time-saving bias applies to active driving and that it affects the choice of driving speed. The drivers’ time-saving judgements show that the perception of the time elapsed while driving does not eliminate the time-saving bias.

Authors and Affiliations

Gabriella Eriksson, Ola Svenson and Lars Eriksson

Keywords

Related Articles

It pays to be nice, but not really nice: Asymmetric reputations from prosociality across 7 countries

Cultures differ in many important ways, but one trait appears to be universally valued: prosociality. For one’s reputation, around the world, it pays to be nice to others. However, recent research with American participa...

Framing the frame: How task goals determine the likelihood and direction of framing effects

We examined how the goal of a decision task influences the perceived positive, negative valence of the alternatives and thereby the likelihood and direction of framing effects. In Study 1 we manipulated the goal to incre...

The influence of group decision making on indecisiveness-related decisional confidence

Indecisiveness is an individual difference measure of chronic difficulty and delay in decision making. Indecisiveness is associated with low decisional confidence and distinct patterns of pre-choice information search be...

The impact of actively open-minded thinking on social media communication

Online, social media communication is often ambiguous, and it can encourage speed and inattentiveness. We investigated whether Actively Open Minded Thinking (AOT), a dispositional willingness to seek out new or potential...

Prompting deliberation increases base-rate use

People often base judgments on stereotypes, even when contradictory base-rate information is provided. In a sample of 438 students from two state universities, we tested several hypotheses regarding why people would pref...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP678085
  • DOI -
  • Views 141
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Gabriella Eriksson, Ola Svenson and Lars Eriksson (2013). The time-saving bias: Judgements, cognition and perception. Judgment and Decision Making, 8(4), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-678085