Abstract
Realism in the performance predictions of 60 university students was investigated. After a practice trial on a task of creativity, one group of subjects were asked to state their expectations and the other group their hopes for their performance scores on the first and second test trials before each one. Both groups were unrealistically pessimistic about their performance: the first and second trial predictions of the expectation group as well as of the hope group were lower than their actual performance scores. In all cases (except the second-trial prediction of the hope group) the differences reached significance. Results are explained from the functional perspective. It is suggested that unrealistically low predictions may serve an affective function (feeling better).
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