Peacewise comments on Planning Fallacy - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 September 2007 07:06AM

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Comment author: Peacewise 24 October 2011 12:24:18AM *  0 points [-]

Something I wrote a while back... A consideration of a relationship between self-serving bias and self-handicapping i.e. self-sabotage. We tend to perceive ourselves favourably and seek out rationales and behaviour that confirms our opinion of ourselves - this is called the self-serving bias.

Some times we self-handicap to create excuses for our possible failure, this shores up our self-serving bias, but self-sabotage also makes our failure more likely, potentially creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. One way we self-handicap is to not try, or not try hard enough.

Procrastination for study is one example of this relationship, which when combined with the tendency to underestimate the time needed to complete a task - i.e. the Planning Fallacy, it's no wonder why so many students struggle to achieve. We leave it to the last minute AND it takes longer to do than we thought it would!

Place these above concepts in the context of the negative aspects of both perfectionism and correction based ideologies and the power of not trying as means to protect ones self stands clearly revealed... to those seeking mastery.