I mentioned “differently biased forecasts of the second item”. This is one of many ways you can have noise, but the question was about realistic expectation, not how many they’d like to have, so if you’re going too far away from even answer you’re either dishonest with the researchers, or with yourself.
It’s not at all obvious that any of the small factors mentioned should bias the test to give men higher scores, other than outright lying.
the question was about realistic expectation, not how many they’d like to have
Recall that in the planning fallacy, there was no difference between the “realistic” forecast and the “best case” forecast. This form of self-deception extends beyond the area of sexuality; what question 2 actually measures is a person’s vision of their next five years of sexual relationships, and how many and how enduring they’d want them to be. (The “realistic” disclaimer is commented out in conscious human forecasting.)
And, given the cultural incentives and evolutionary psychology, why would it be surprising for males’ imagined “best case” to skew much higher than their actual future, and females’ imagined “best case” to skew much lower?
I mentioned “differently biased forecasts of the second item”. This is one of many ways you can have noise, but the question was about realistic expectation, not how many they’d like to have, so if you’re going too far away from even answer you’re either dishonest with the researchers, or with yourself.
It’s not at all obvious that any of the small factors mentioned should bias the test to give men higher scores, other than outright lying.
Recall that in the planning fallacy, there was no difference between the “realistic” forecast and the “best case” forecast. This form of self-deception extends beyond the area of sexuality; what question 2 actually measures is a person’s vision of their next five years of sexual relationships, and how many and how enduring they’d want them to be. (The “realistic” disclaimer is commented out in conscious human forecasting.)
And, given the cultural incentives and evolutionary psychology, why would it be surprising for males’ imagined “best case” to skew much higher than their actual future, and females’ imagined “best case” to skew much lower?