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Research Details
"What, Me Worry?": Arousal, Misattribution, and the Effect of Temporal Distance on Confidence, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Abstract
Confidence has been found to vary with temporal proximity to an upcoming task: People's confidence that they will do well tends to diminish as the "moment of truth" draws near. We propose that this phenomenon stems in part from individuals using their pretask arousal as a cue to their level of confidence. Arousal that is part and parcel of "gearing up" to perform a task may be misattributed to diminished confidence. Consistent with this reasoning, participants in two experiments who were encouraged to misattribute their arousal to a neutral source ("subliminal noise") expressed greater confidence in their ability than did participants not able to do so-a result that would not be obtained if arousal was simply a reflection, and not a cause, of diminished confidence.
Type
Article
Author(s)
Kenneth Savitsky, Victoria Medvec, Ann E Charlton, Thomas D. Gilovich
Date Published
1998
Citations
Savitsky, Kenneth, Victoria Medvec, Ann E Charlton, and Thomas D. Gilovich. 1998. "What, Me Worry?": Arousal, Misattribution, and the Effect of Temporal Distance on Confidence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 24(5): 529-536.
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