Time is of the Essence? Investigating How Culturally-Based Perceptions of Time Affect Hindsight Bias for Task Completion
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Authors
Louie, Therese A.
Chandrasekar, Prabha
Wu, Meng-Ping
Issue Date
2014-04
Type
Article
Language
en_US
Keywords
Marketing
Alternative Title
Abstract
Hindsight bias, known as the “Monday Morning Quarterback” syndrome, occurs when
individuals feel they would have been able to predict the outcome to past events. This research
examined if hindsight effects for personally-relevant task completion differs in monochronic
cultures, which have a one-at-a-time approach to deadlines, and polychronic cultures, which are
accustomed to working on many things at once. Based upon self-serving mechanisms, it was
predicted and found that the former group would be more likely to show hindsight distortion.
Participants made a list of tasks they planned to complete in a few weeks. After that time
period, half the participants were asked to recall their number of listed tasks, and half provided
recall estimates after noting how many tasks they had completed. As expected, relative to the
polychronic group, the monochronic group’s retrospective judgments were biased in the
direction of outcome information. Discussion focuses on applications and future research.
Description
16 pages
Citation
Publisher
Drake Management Review