Td. Wilson et Sj. Lafleur, KNOWING WHAT YOULL DO - EFFECTS OF ANALYZING REASONS ON SELF-PREDICTION, Journal of personality and social psychology, 68(1), 1995, pp. 21-35
Analyzing the reasons why one would or would not act in a certain way
was predicted to increase the perceived likelihood of the behavior and
to lower the accuracy of the self-predictions. In 3 studies, college
students predicted whether they would act in friendly or unfriendly wa
ys toward an acquaintance. Those asked to analyze reasons why they wou
ld or would not perform the behaviors, as compared with no-analyze con
trols, were more likely to say they would perform the behaviors, showi
ng a confirmation bias; made less accurate predictions, because analyz
ing reasons changed their predictions but not their actual behavior; a
nd were more overconfident, because analyzing reasons lowered accuracy
but not confidence. Each of these effects was especially pronounced w
hen people's initial liking for the target person was different from t
he valence of the behavior they were predicting.