Osiurak François, Morgado Nicolas, Vallet Guillaume T, Drot Marion, Palluel-Germain Richard
Laboratoire d'Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs (EA 3082), Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France,
Psychol Res. 2014 Jan;78(1):1-9. doi: 10.1007/s00426-013-0485-9. Epub 2013 Feb 9.
Two experiments examine whether people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use in motor tasks. Participants had to move different quantities of objects by hand (two at a time) or with a tool (four at a time). The tool was not within reach so participants had to get it before moving the objects. In Experiment 1, the task was performed in a real and an imagined situation. In Experiment 2, participants had to decide for each quantity, whether they preferred moving the objects by hand or with the tool. Our findings indicated that people perceive tool actions as less costly in terms of movement time than they actually are (Experiment 1) and decide to use a tool even when it objectively provides less time-based benefits than using the hands (Experiment 2). Taken together, the data suggest that people overestimate the benefits provided by tool use.
两项实验探究了人们是否高估了工具使用在运动任务中所带来的益处。参与者必须手动搬运不同数量的物体（一次两个）或使用工具搬运（一次四个）。工具不在伸手可及的范围内，因此参与者在搬运物体之前必须先拿到工具。在实验1中，任务在真实和想象的情境中进行。在实验2中，参与者必须针对每个数量的物体决定是更倾向于手动搬运还是使用工具搬运。我们的研究结果表明，人们认为工具操作在运动时间方面的成本比实际情况更低（实验1），并且即使在客观上使用工具比手动操作带来的基于时间的益处更少时，人们仍会决定使用工具（实验2）。综合来看，数据表明人们高估了工具使用所带来的益处。
