Misperceptions and Beliefs in Effort Choices

Abstract

How much and how well students and employees work depends certainly on how unpleasant and useful the work is; but it also depends on how unpleasant and useful they predict it to be. In this dissertation I study one systematic bias people have in predicting the future unpleasantness, as well as the beliefs they hold over the usefulness of working more. In the first chapter, I explore the mispredictions and mistakes people make when they have projection bias, when they project how unpleasant work is now, due to fatigue or boredom, into the future. In the second chapter I measure the size of projection bias in an online experiment with real-effort tasks, with a focus on testing some of the predictions made in chapter 1. In the third chapter I explore college students' beliefs over the value of studying more and attending lectures from a small-scale experiment at Harvard College.