Interpersonal Projection Bias: Experimental Evidence

This study investigates the relationships of prediction time and confidence levels with prediction errors in light of interpersonal projection bias. Systematic prediction errors are frequently caused by projection bias, a cognitive distortion in which people project their current preferences or attitudes onto others. Even though interpersonal projection bias has been well studied in the past, the impacts of task duration, confidence level and instructional guidance on such prediction errors still need to be sufficiently explored. By examining whether these factors affect the size of prediction errors, this study aims to close that gap. The primary goal is to present empirical evidence for how participants’ such characteristics shape their prediction accuracy, building on the framework of Benjamin Bushong and Tristan Gagnon-Bartsch’s seminal work ”Failures in Forecasting: An Experiment on Interpersonal Projection Bias.” The findings show that overconfidence bolsters the prediction error while no remarkable impact is observed by prediction time and instructional guidance.