Paul D Windschitl
Biographic Data
| ID | 1660255 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul D Windschitl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul D |
| FAMILY NAME | Windschitl |
| SIGNATURE | WINDSCHITL P D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Iowa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4058-3779 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 132 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The cognitive mechanisms behind wishful predictions: A diffusion model decomposition
Never … Often? Comparisons That Shape People's Likert‐Type Ratings of Behavior Frequencies
Responses to Likert‐type behavioral frequency (LBF) questions often do not consistently map onto objective numerical estimates. Prior research suggests that social and other comparisons may underlie this divergence, but the relative influence of different comparison standards—and the cognitive processes supporting them—remains unclear. Across two studies, we examined how comparisons to peers, averages, experts, past selves, and conceptually irrel…
Do people desire optimism from others during a novel global crisis
During a global crisis, does the desire for good news also mean an endorsement of an optimistic bias? Five pre‐registered studies, conducted at the start of the COVID pandemic, examined people's lay prescriptions for thinking about uncertainty—specifically whether they thought forecasters should be optimistic, realistic, or pessimistic in how they estimated key likelihoods. Participants gave prescriptions for forecasters with different roles (e.g…
The desirability bias in predictions under aleatory and epistemic uncertainty
Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking
The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity pla…
Unhealthy and unaware? Misjudging social comparative standing for health-relevant behavior
An Ideological House of Mirrors: Political Stereotypes as Exaggerations of Motivated Social Cognition Differences
Previous research on political stereotypes has focused on the perceived moral values or political attitudes of conservatives and liberals. The current studies examined whether laypeople hold stereotypes about the psychological traits of Republicans and Democrats and whether those stereotypes represent exaggerations of actual political differences. Participants completed measures of epistemic (Study 1), existential (Study 2), and ideological (Stud…
Behaving Optimistically: How the (Un)Desirability of an Outcome Can Bias People's Preparations for It
Past research on the desirability bias and on bracing for bad news has focused on the potential influence of outcome desirability on people's stated expectations. The present studies examined its influence on behavior—that is, what is done in anticipation of, or preparation for, an uncertain outcome. In five studies, the desirability of possible outcomes for an event, which was uncertain and uncontrollable by the participant, was manipulated, and…
Searching for the Limits and Explanations of the Nonselective Superiority Bias
Three experiments were conducted to test the robustness and explanations of the Nonselective Superiority Bias (NSSB), whereby any randomly selected item from a positive category is rated more favorably when compared with a cohesive group of other exemplars from the same category. Having participants rank order all exemplars prior to making a direct comparative rating did not reduce the NSSB (Experiment 1). Whether participants considered similari…
Knowledge matters: Anchoring effects are moderated by knowledge level
Previous research into the relationship between knowledge level and anchoring effects has led to mixed conclusions. This paper presents four studies that used a diverse set of stimuli and paradigms to further investigate this relationship. In Study 1, greater knowledge was associated with smaller anchoring effects—both when knowledge was measured using subjective self‐assessments and when using an objective knowledge measure. In Study 2, particip…
Hope to be right: Biased information seeking following arbitrary and informed predictions
Are people excessive or judicious in their egocentrism? A modeling approach to understanding bias and accuracy in people's optimism
People are often egocentric when judging their likelihood of success in competitions, leading to overoptimism about winning when circumstances are generally easy and to overpessimism when the circumstances are difficult. Yet, egocentrism might be grounded in a rational tendency to favor highly reliable information (about the self) more so than less reliable information (about others). A general theory of probability called extended support theory…
The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons
The influence of outcome desirability on optimism
People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that despite the prevalence of the idea that desires bias op…
Team allegiance can lead to both optimistic and pessimistic predictions
Biases in Social Comparative Judgments: The Role of Nonmotivated Factors in Above-Average and Comparative-Optimism Effects
Biases in social comparative judgments, such as those illustrated by above-average and comparative-optimism effects, are often regarded as products of motivated reasoning (e.g., self-enhancement). These effects, however, can also be produced by information-processing limitations or aspects of judgment processes that are not necessarily biased by motivational factors. In this article, the authors briefly review motivational accounts of biased comp…
The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts
When providing a probability estimate for an event, experts often supply reasons that they expect will clarify and support that estimate. We investigated the possible unintended influence that these reasons might have on a listener's intuitive interpretation of the event's likelihood. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that people who read positive reasons for a doctor's probability estimate regarding a hypothetical surgery were more optimistic tha…
The Influence of Egocentrism and Focalism on People's Optimism in Competitions: When What Affects Us Equally Affects Me More
Six experiments investigated people's optimism in competitions. The studies involved hypothetical and real competitions (course grades in Experiments 1 and 2, a trivia game in Experiments 3-5, and a poker game in Experiment 6) in which the presence of shared adversities and benefits (factors that would generally hinder or help the absolute performance of all competitors) was manipulated. Shared adversities tended to reduce people's subjective lik…
Judging the accuracy of a likelihood judgment: The case of smoking risk
A standard method for assessing whether people have appropriate internal representations of an event's likelihood is to check whether their subjective probability or frequency estimates for the event correspond with the assumed objective value for that event. When a person's estimate for the event exceeds its assumed objective probability or frequency, the person's expectancy for the event is concluded to be greater than warranted. This paper des…
Context and the interpretation of likelihood information: The role of intergroup comparisons on perceived vulnerability
Four experiments investigated how people's perceptions about a group's (e.g., women's) vulnerability to a disease are influenced by information about the prevalence of the disease in a comparable group (e.g., men). Participants read symptom and prevalence infomation about fictitious diseases before answering questions regarding target group vulnerability. Participants used the prevalence rate for a nontarget group as an immediate comparison stand…
Stimulus Sampling and Social Psychological Experimentation
The authors discuss the problem with failing to sample stimuli in social psychological experimentation. Although commonly construed as an issue for external validity, the authors emphasize how failure to sample stimuli also can threaten construct validity. They note some circumstances where the need for stimulus sampling is less obvious and more obvious, and they discuss some well-known cognitive biases that can contribute to the failure of resea…
The alternative-outcomes effect
Distributions of possible scenario outcomes were manipulated without changing the probabilities of focal outcomes (e.g., you hold 3 raffle tickets and 7 other people each hold 1 vs. you hold 3 and another person holds 7 ). Participants' probability estimates confirmed that beliefs about the objective likelihood of the focal outcomes were largely unaffected by the manipulations. As expected, however, nonnumeric certainty estimates (Studies 1-3), f…
Biases in Social Comparative Judgments: The Role of Nonmotivated Factors in Above-Average and Comparative-Optimism Effects
Biases in social comparative judgments, such as those illustrated by above-average and comparative-optimism effects, are often regarded as products of motivated reasoning (e.g., self-enhancement). These effects, however, can also be produced by information-processing limitations or aspects of judgment processes that are not necessarily biased by motivational factors. In this article, the authors briefly review motivational accounts of biased comp…
The Influence of Egocentrism and Focalism on People's Optimism in Competitions: When What Affects Us Equally Affects Me More
Six experiments investigated people's optimism in competitions. The studies involved hypothetical and real competitions (course grades in Experiments 1 and 2, a trivia game in Experiments 3-5, and a poker game in Experiment 6) in which the presence of shared adversities and benefits (factors that would generally hinder or help the absolute performance of all competitors) was manipulated. Shared adversities tended to reduce people's subjective lik…
The influence of outcome desirability on optimism
People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that despite the prevalence of the idea that desires bias op…
The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons
Judging the accuracy of a likelihood judgment: The case of smoking risk
A standard method for assessing whether people have appropriate internal representations of an event's likelihood is to check whether their subjective probability or frequency estimates for the event correspond with the assumed objective value for that event. When a person's estimate for the event exceeds its assumed objective probability or frequency, the person's expectancy for the event is concluded to be greater than warranted. This paper des…
Context and the interpretation of likelihood information: The role of intergroup comparisons on perceived vulnerability
Four experiments investigated how people's perceptions about a group's (e.g., women's) vulnerability to a disease are influenced by information about the prevalence of the disease in a comparable group (e.g., men). Participants read symptom and prevalence infomation about fictitious diseases before answering questions regarding target group vulnerability. Participants used the prevalence rate for a nontarget group as an immediate comparison stand…
The alternative-outcomes effect
Distributions of possible scenario outcomes were manipulated without changing the probabilities of focal outcomes (e.g., you hold 3 raffle tickets and 7 other people each hold 1 vs. you hold 3 and another person holds 7 ). Participants' probability estimates confirmed that beliefs about the objective likelihood of the focal outcomes were largely unaffected by the manipulations. As expected, however, nonnumeric certainty estimates (Studies 1-3), f…
Hope to be right: Biased information seeking following arbitrary and informed predictions
Are people excessive or judicious in their egocentrism? A modeling approach to understanding bias and accuracy in people's optimism
People are often egocentric when judging their likelihood of success in competitions, leading to overoptimism about winning when circumstances are generally easy and to overpessimism when the circumstances are difficult. Yet, egocentrism might be grounded in a rational tendency to favor highly reliable information (about the self) more so than less reliable information (about others). A general theory of probability called extended support theory…
Knowledge matters: Anchoring effects are moderated by knowledge level
Previous research into the relationship between knowledge level and anchoring effects has led to mixed conclusions. This paper presents four studies that used a diverse set of stimuli and paradigms to further investigate this relationship. In Study 1, greater knowledge was associated with smaller anchoring effects—both when knowledge was measured using subjective self‐assessments and when using an objective knowledge measure. In Study 2, particip…
The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts
When providing a probability estimate for an event, experts often supply reasons that they expect will clarify and support that estimate. We investigated the possible unintended influence that these reasons might have on a listener's intuitive interpretation of the event's likelihood. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that people who read positive reasons for a doctor's probability estimate regarding a hypothetical surgery were more optimistic tha…
Unhealthy and unaware? Misjudging social comparative standing for health-relevant behavior
The alternative-outcomes effect
Distributions of possible scenario outcomes were manipulated without changing the probabilities of focal outcomes (e.g., you hold 3 raffle tickets and 7 other people each hold 1 vs. you hold 3 and another person holds 7 ). Participants' probability estimates confirmed that beliefs about the objective likelihood of the focal outcomes were largely unaffected by the manipulations. As expected, however, nonnumeric certainty estimates (Studies 1-3), f…
Stimulus Sampling and Social Psychological Experimentation
The authors discuss the problem with failing to sample stimuli in social psychological experimentation. Although commonly construed as an issue for external validity, the authors emphasize how failure to sample stimuli also can threaten construct validity. They note some circumstances where the need for stimulus sampling is less obvious and more obvious, and they discuss some well-known cognitive biases that can contribute to the failure of resea…
Judging the accuracy of a likelihood judgment: The case of smoking risk
A standard method for assessing whether people have appropriate internal representations of an event's likelihood is to check whether their subjective probability or frequency estimates for the event correspond with the assumed objective value for that event. When a person's estimate for the event exceeds its assumed objective probability or frequency, the person's expectancy for the event is concluded to be greater than warranted. This paper des…
Context and the interpretation of likelihood information: The role of intergroup comparisons on perceived vulnerability
Four experiments investigated how people's perceptions about a group's (e.g., women's) vulnerability to a disease are influenced by information about the prevalence of the disease in a comparable group (e.g., men). Participants read symptom and prevalence infomation about fictitious diseases before answering questions regarding target group vulnerability. Participants used the prevalence rate for a nontarget group as an immediate comparison stand…
The influence of reasons on interpretations of probability forecasts
When providing a probability estimate for an event, experts often supply reasons that they expect will clarify and support that estimate. We investigated the possible unintended influence that these reasons might have on a listener's intuitive interpretation of the event's likelihood. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that people who read positive reasons for a doctor's probability estimate regarding a hypothetical surgery were more optimistic tha…
The Influence of Egocentrism and Focalism on People's Optimism in Competitions: When What Affects Us Equally Affects Me More
Six experiments investigated people's optimism in competitions. The studies involved hypothetical and real competitions (course grades in Experiments 1 and 2, a trivia game in Experiments 3-5, and a poker game in Experiment 6) in which the presence of shared adversities and benefits (factors that would generally hinder or help the absolute performance of all competitors) was manipulated. Shared adversities tended to reduce people's subjective lik…
Biases in Social Comparative Judgments: The Role of Nonmotivated Factors in Above-Average and Comparative-Optimism Effects
Biases in social comparative judgments, such as those illustrated by above-average and comparative-optimism effects, are often regarded as products of motivated reasoning (e.g., self-enhancement). These effects, however, can also be produced by information-processing limitations or aspects of judgment processes that are not necessarily biased by motivational factors. In this article, the authors briefly review motivational accounts of biased comp…
Team allegiance can lead to both optimistic and pessimistic predictions
The rational side of egocentrism in social comparisons
The influence of outcome desirability on optimism
People are often presumed to be vulnerable to a desirability bias, namely, a tendency to be overoptimistic about a future outcome as a result of their preferences or desires for that outcome. In this article, this form of wishful thinking is distinguished from the more general concepts of motivated reasoning and overoptimism, and the evidence for this bias is reviewed. The authors argue that despite the prevalence of the idea that desires bias op…
Are people excessive or judicious in their egocentrism? A modeling approach to understanding bias and accuracy in people's optimism
People are often egocentric when judging their likelihood of success in competitions, leading to overoptimism about winning when circumstances are generally easy and to overpessimism when the circumstances are difficult. Yet, egocentrism might be grounded in a rational tendency to favor highly reliable information (about the self) more so than less reliable information (about others). A general theory of probability called extended support theory…
Hope to be right: Biased information seeking following arbitrary and informed predictions
Searching for the Limits and Explanations of the Nonselective Superiority Bias
Three experiments were conducted to test the robustness and explanations of the Nonselective Superiority Bias (NSSB), whereby any randomly selected item from a positive category is rated more favorably when compared with a cohesive group of other exemplars from the same category. Having participants rank order all exemplars prior to making a direct comparative rating did not reduce the NSSB (Experiment 1). Whether participants considered similari…
Knowledge matters: Anchoring effects are moderated by knowledge level
Previous research into the relationship between knowledge level and anchoring effects has led to mixed conclusions. This paper presents four studies that used a diverse set of stimuli and paradigms to further investigate this relationship. In Study 1, greater knowledge was associated with smaller anchoring effects—both when knowledge was measured using subjective self‐assessments and when using an objective knowledge measure. In Study 2, particip…
An Ideological House of Mirrors: Political Stereotypes as Exaggerations of Motivated Social Cognition Differences
Previous research on political stereotypes has focused on the perceived moral values or political attitudes of conservatives and liberals. The current studies examined whether laypeople hold stereotypes about the psychological traits of Republicans and Democrats and whether those stereotypes represent exaggerations of actual political differences. Participants completed measures of epistemic (Study 1), existential (Study 2), and ideological (Stud…
Behaving Optimistically: How the (Un)Desirability of an Outcome Can Bias People's Preparations for It
Past research on the desirability bias and on bracing for bad news has focused on the potential influence of outcome desirability on people's stated expectations. The present studies examined its influence on behavior—that is, what is done in anticipation of, or preparation for, an uncertain outcome. In five studies, the desirability of possible outcomes for an event, which was uncertain and uncontrollable by the participant, was manipulated, and…
Unhealthy and unaware? Misjudging social comparative standing for health-relevant behavior
Attributions for ambiguity in a treatment‐decision context can create ambiguity aversion or seeking
The phenomenon of ambiguity aversion suggests that people prefer options that offer precisely rather than imprecisely known chances of success. However, past work on people's responses to ambiguity in health treatment contexts found ambiguity seeking rather than aversion. The present work addressed whether such findings reflected a broad tendency for ambiguity seeking in health treatment contexts or whether specific attributions for ambiguity pla…
The desirability bias in predictions under aleatory and epistemic uncertainty
Do people desire optimism from others during a novel global crisis
During a global crisis, does the desire for good news also mean an endorsement of an optimistic bias? Five pre‐registered studies, conducted at the start of the COVID pandemic, examined people's lay prescriptions for thinking about uncertainty—specifically whether they thought forecasters should be optimistic, realistic, or pessimistic in how they estimated key likelihoods. Participants gave prescriptions for forecasters with different roles (e.g…
The cognitive mechanisms behind wishful predictions: A diffusion model decomposition
Never … Often? Comparisons That Shape People's Likert‐Type Ratings of Behavior Frequencies
Responses to Likert‐type behavioral frequency (LBF) questions often do not consistently map onto objective numerical estimates. Prior research suggests that social and other comparisons may underlie this divergence, but the relative influence of different comparison standards—and the cognitive processes supporting them—remains unclear. Across two studies, we examined how comparisons to peers, averages, experts, past selves, and conceptually irrel…
Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (15 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (13 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Optimism, Hope, and Well-being (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (8 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Economics (5 works)