Joint plans, emotions, and relationships: A diary study of errors

Human societies are built on cooperative plans. Most such plans succeed and, when this occurs, trust in the relationship with the other person involved in the plan is increased. But some plans go awry. We present analyses of errors, each recorded in an incident diary, by 217 participants when something went wrong in a plan that involved someone else. Joint errors occurred for each participant on average once every two or three days. At least 77% of the errors occurred when the planners were separated from each other in ways that would be rare in face-to-face societies. Some errors occurred when participants had unstated goals that affected the plan. When an error occurred, people tended to give higher importance to the relationship with the other person involved than to the plan that had gone wrong. In 75% of errors, participants attributed the error to the other person in the plan. Some 66% of errors made the participant angry with the other person. When the relationship with the other person was not imp...

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