The Influence Of Temporal Unpacking On Task Duration Estimates:The Moderating Effect Of Task Complexity

Time estimation is one of essential judgment activities in our social life. To coordinate their plans and arrangements,individuals often need to estimate the duration of tasks.However, studies have shown that when predict the time a task needed,people tend to have prediction error. It has a negative impact on the execution of the plan.Therefore, it’s important to explore the psychological mechanism underlying the prediction error.And, knowing about the factors that affect the task duration estimates can help us improve the accuracy of time estimation.Some literature has shown that unpacking a multifaceted task into components prior to estimating its duration will affect the estimates, while this effect is moderated by the complexity of task.Based on previous studies,the present research, in the perspective of temporality, observed if the unpacking methods would have influence on task duration estimations and if this influence is moderated by task complexity,too.There are two experiments in this research. In experiment1, we adopted two computer tasks which just differ in complexity to examined the effect in common task of that how time-consuming the components are perceived to be on task duration estimates.We also examined if this effect is moderated by the task complexity. Experiment 2 is parallel with experiment 1. We adopted two dating tasks which just differ in complexity to examined the effect in task having temporal order of that how early or late the components located in the task sequence on task duration estimates.We also examined if this effect is moderated by task complexity,too.The article came to the conclusion as follows:1.Unpacking components that take short time to complete decrease estimates,whereas unpacking longer components increases estimates.Unpacking late components decrease task duration estimates,while unpacking early components increases estimates.2.The short/long effect and the early/late effect are moderated by the task complexity,and they would not occur when the task is too simple.