The Hare and the Hedgehog: Empirical evidence on the relationship between the individual Pace of Life and the speed-accuracy continuum

Abstract

Against the background of the speed-accuracy trade-off, we explored whether the Pace of Life can be used to identify heterogeneity in the strategy to place more weight on either fast or accurate accomplishments. The Pace of Life approaches an individual’s exposure to time and is an intensively studied concept in the evolutionary biology research. Albeit overall rarely, it is increasingly used to understand human behavior and may fulfill many criteria of a personal trait. In a controlled laboratory environment, we measured the participants’ Pace of Life, as well as their performance on a real-effort task. In the real-effort task, the participants had to encode words, whereby each word encoded correctly was associated with a monetary reward. We found that individuals with a faster Pace of Life accomplished more tasks in total. At the same time, they were less accurate and made more mistakes (in absolute terms) than those with a slower Pace of Life. Thus, the Pace of Life seems to be useful to identify an individual’s stance on the speed-accuracy continuum. In our specific task, placing more weight on speed instead of accuracy paid off: Individuals with a faster Pace of Life were ultimately more successful (with regard to their monetary revenue).

Restoration of Attention by Rest in a Multitasking World: Theory, Methodology, and Empirical Evidence

“…We are currently living in a world characterized by acceleration on many fronts, which yields ever-growing task and performance demands, often requiring the execution of multiple tasks at around the same time (Engelmann et al, 2011;Wörle et al, 2021). In this context, it appears essential for corresponding research fields to focus on ways which render life in a multitasking world more bearable (Colzato et al, 2021;Hoffmann et al, 2021;Hommel and Beste, 2021;Kärtner et al, 2021), and the study of rest as a means to foster both performance and well-being represents a core endeavor that should clearly be explored further, but ideally on a maximally advanced level with respect to both theory building and methodology. The present paper was written with this objective in mind.…”

“…In the perspective of their analytical framework, Kaplan and Kaplan (1989) have identified four key principles of recuperation that can be generalized to the field of break research in general, (1) change of scenery, (2) conceptual distance, (3) fascination, (4) and extent of attracting involuntary engagement. Additionally, one more principle can -but rather indirectly -be extracted, (5) the slowing of pace (Levine, 1998;Hoffmann et al, 2021). In terms of break effects, it can be said that people recover well when they make a change from the work task to the break activity, when it offers sufficient distance from the work activity, when the break activity is beautiful or fascinating, and when it engages attention in a non-goal directed way.…”

“…From any straightforward formulation of a non-strategic model, the observation of a timeon-task decrement would indicate a decline or total depletion of resources (Baumeister et al, 1998;Hagger et al, 2010;Inzlicht and Schmeichel, 2012). In contrast, the strategic-resource model incorporates that individuals take preventive measures to either economize resource expenditure, or doing this rather impulsively, for example, when they suddenly experience effort (Thayer et al, 1994;Inzlicht et al, 2018;Hoffmann et al, 2021). Contemporary theorists such as Thayer (1989), Matthews (2021) proposed that it is the internal experience of states of the two aspects "energy" and "tension" that serves as the "tachometer" indicating whether to save or to spend effort to the task at hand.…”

Who has the future in mind? Gender, time perspectives, and pro-environmental behaviour

“…This experiment was part of a larger research project on individual decision-making. InHoffmann et al (2021) we report on characteristics which are associated with the speed-accuracy tradeoff. InHoffmann et al (2022) we present evidence on the role of the individual Pace of Life for productivity and pro-environmental behaviour.…”