The Growth Heuristic?: Investigating the Mechanisms for Presumptions of Improvement

Abstract

People presume improvement over time to be more likely than stability or decline, even in domains unrelated to themselves. Two studies were conducted to investigate the mechanism driving these presumptions. I hypothesized this effect to operate under heuristic pathways. Study 1 examined whether situational differences in intuitive versus reflective thinking were related to people’s presumption of improvement over time. Study 2 tested whether a manipulation of intuitive versus reflective thinking via an accountability prompt would influence presumptions of improvement. Both studies provided a successful replication of our prior research but failed to provide evidence of the growth bias operating through heuristic processing.