The Improvement Default: People Presume Improvement When Lacking Information

Abstract

People erroneously think that things they know little about improve over time. We propose that, due to salient cultural narratives, improvement is a highly accessible expectation that leads people to presume improvement in the absence of diagnostic information. Five studies investigated an improvement default: a general tendency to presume improvement even in self-irrelevant domains. Participants erroneously presumed improvement over esoteric historical time periods associated with decline (Study 1). Participants arranged a stranger’s experiences to produce trends of improvement (Study 2). Participants presumed improvement for a fictional city when given no diagnostic information about it (Study 3). Finally, participants who perceived more past improvement were less supportive of policies that may precipitate further improvement (Study 4). Implications for consequences, such as complacency toward improving inequality, are discussed.