“Rejecters Overestimate the Negative Consequences They Will Face From Refusal”, 2022-10-06 ():
[cf. CoZE, risk aversion] This study suggests that people may overestimate the negative outcomes they will face from saying “no” because they are worried that the rejectees might cause harm to them in the future. Exaggerating the negative outcomes of refusal may help prepare for or even eliminate them. When rejectees are less likely to act unfriendly toward rejecters, rejecters can predict the outcomes of refusal more accurately.
People often find it difficult to refuse requests from others partially because they are concern about the negative consequences they will face from saying “no.” However, are these concerns well-founded?
The results from 7 studies (n = 2,132) and 4 supplementary studies (n = 1,470) showed that rejecters overestimated these negative consequences.
This overestimation persisted in hypothetical (Studies 1 & 3), real-life (Study 2), and incentivized (Study 4) settings. We also found that this overestimation resulted from a desire to avoid negative consequences. As the cost was sometimes larger for underestimation than for overestimation in refusal, exaggerating the negative outcomes of refusal faced by rejecters may help prepare for or even eliminate them, and eventually satisfy people’s desire to avoid negative consequences. If the desire to avoid negative consequences weakened, this overestimation reduced or disappeared (Studies 5–7).
[Keywords: misprediction, refusal, motivated reasoning, worryful thinking, judgment & decision-making]