You have exactly the same effect in play if somebody calls you and ask how long it takes for you to arrive to a meeting point. If you answer 10 minutes, it will be seen as an approximation between 10 and 20 minutes. If you answer 8 minutes, it will be considered as 8 +/- 1 minute.
This is really impressive, this works each time. Especially if you are on ski slopes and you have two groups trying to meet at a given point. 10 minutes == "We can do another run or two". 8 minutes == "We need to pay attention, they are coming right now!"
Per U.S. Census data, relatively few people have a commute in the 5 minute block from 25 to 30 minutes. Only 20-25, and 30-35. The data shows a very clear valley in the 25-30 block.
Suggests people think of their commute as 20 plus a few minutes but rounding down optimistically, or think of it as almost 30 minutes rounding up angrily, never think of it as 27 minutes.
No writeup of the commute data has mentioned this phenomenon, which I suspect was exactly the same thinking you describe.
> If you answer 10 minutes, it will be seen as an approximation between 10 and 20 minutes. If you answer 8 minutes, it will be considered as 8 +/- 1 minute.
Unless you're talking to a child who has not yet internalized this distinction! My kid frequently asks exactly how much time has passed, and I sometimes have to explain that I don't mean five minutes literally, but figuratively.
Although your answer may be closer to the truth, this paper suggests using a fixed number not divisible by 1 or 5. So, for example, 6 minutes and 23 seconds.
To replace that with saying 383.512 seconds would signal confidence in the time of a future event, but not in a speaker who is scheduling a meeting with another human.
But its hard to extend this one to prices and bids. If you give a range of money, people will come back and say "but you said you could do it for [the lowest possible number you gave]"
The answer is to make it clear what the tradeoffs are. For example it could be more cash and less stock. Or lower price but longer lead time. Just offering a range without any other variables would be foolish, and complicated negotiations usually have more factors than just price.
My german friend taught me this. Now I do exactly what you say, if it's an approximate, I say 5-10 mins. If I'm being more precise, I'll say 4 mins, 7 mins etc, which does exactly what you mention: it "suddenly" turns the approximation into a time critical event.
And yet, how often are prices at a store still quoted as $4.95? or $10.99? We all know what the psychology of pricing is, and yet it still persists. People are strange and illogical creatures.
They just round more than you: I think your presumption that others should think like you is bizarre. Some people only round to 10 cents. If you are wealthy enough, you could easily round 10.99 to $0.
> I think your presumption that others should think like you is bizarre.
What I actually wrote was "bizarre to me", not just "bizarre" (as in your quote), so I don't think it's fair to say that my comment conveyed such presumption
Keeping with the arrival time estimate, and I’m not sure if this answers your question
But I live in a very dense city (Chicago), it’s become almost “set your watch to it” reliable that not only are estimates more reliable from friends who live here when they say “I’ll be there in 8 minutes”, they’re also seemingly more likely to offer such a precise estimate because they know the area, light timings, and traffic patterns and that certain kind of behavior found among drivers in this city.
Compared to when I have friends from out of town renting a car they’ll tell me “GPS says we’ll be there in 10 minutes” I instinctively add another 10 and it’s never failed that they’ll show up and go “that was a long 10 minutes!” And I just smile.
I lived in a part of town that was in the process of infill so a lot of people “knew” it without really knowing it.
It was practically a given that the first time someone visited they would arrive 15-20 minutes later than they estimated. It seemed like an area without a lot of traffic but it was in that uncanny valley where there’s enough traffic where you catch a lot of lights, and you aren’t turning right on red because there are people in front of you, and you may or may not make the left turn light on the first cycle.
Also the whole city is so tuned for one direction of traffic that it takes longer to go across the narrow dimension than the long one.
There was a movie theater that I found I could reliably get to faster on a Friday evening if I drove five blocks past it and doubled back, the lights were that screwed up. 15 blocks faster than 5.
This is really impressive, this works each time. Especially if you are on ski slopes and you have two groups trying to meet at a given point. 10 minutes == "We can do another run or two". 8 minutes == "We need to pay attention, they are coming right now!"