### abstract ###
MISC when judging their likelihood of success in competitive tasks, people tend to be overoptimistic for easy tasks and overpessimistic for hard tasks the shared circumstance effect; sce
MISC previous research has shown that feedback and experience from repeated-play competitions has a limited impact on sces
AIMX however, in this paper, we suggest that competitive situations, in which the shared difficulty or easiness of the task is more transparent, will be more amenable to debiasing via repeated play
OWNX pairs of participants competed in, made predictions about, and received feedback on, multiple rounds of a throwing task involving both easy- and hard-to-aim objects
OWNX participants initially showed robust sces, but they also showed a significant reduction in bias after only one round of feedback
OWNX these and other results support a more positive view than suggested from past research on the potential for sces to be debiased through outcome feedback
### introduction ###
MISC competition abounds in everyday life, where we contend with others for top grades, jobs, trophies, and mates
MISC when resources are at a premium, it is optimal to enter into competitive environments in which we are certain to fare well and to avoid those in which we are doomed to fail
MISC however, when people evaluate their likelihood of success in competitions, they are subject to a robust bias: a competitor should consider the strengths and weaknesses of the self and the other competitors  CITATION , but people often give too much weight to evidence related to their own strengths and weaknesses and too little weight to such evidence about the competitor  CITATION
MISC this egocentrism results in overoptimism when the circumstances of the competition are favorable, such as when competitors in a trivia game learn that the questions will be from an easy category-even though they'll be easy for everyone  CITATION
MISC egocentrism also results in overpessimism when the circumstances are unfavorable e g , a difficult trivia category
MISC this phenomenon of being more optimistic when shared competitive circumstances are favorable than when they are not has been dubbed the shared-circumstance effect  CITATION , and it has been replicated across a variety of settings e g , general knowledge tasks, card games, athletic competitions
MISC in most previous studies on the sce, participants were presented with novel, non-repeated competitive situations
MISC these situations did not allow people to learn from past experiences or from feedback within the immediate competitive context
MISC however, in everyday contexts there are often opportunities to learn how a shared circumstance tends to affect the self, others, and outcomes
MISC for example, when a tennis tournament is played during a string of windy days, players can have several opportunities to observe how the weather affects themselves and their competitors
MISC to examine whether egocentrism and sces persist in repeated-play contexts, rose and windschitl  CITATION  had pairs of participants compete against each other in multiple rounds of a trivia contest that involved easy and hard categories
MISC in each round, participants estimated their likelihood of beating their competitor, answered trivia questions, and received feedback about who won
MISC in initial rounds, there were robust sces; participants were much more optimistic about winning easy categories than hard ones
MISC if they encountered the same hard and easy categories across rounds, the participants learned from feedback
MISC that is, the sce shrank-but slowly-across six rounds with the same categories
MISC the sce was never eliminated, even after six rounds
MISC also, for a seventh round, participants were told there would be new categories
MISC the sce for that round dramatically and fully rebounded; it was every bit as large as observed for round 1
MISC these results provide a bleak view of how well people can learn from feedback and avoid sces
MISC moreover, results from a study by moore and cain  CITATION , which also used repeated plays with feedback, suggest an even bleaker view
MISC those researchers also used easy and difficult quizzes as shared-circumstance manipulations, but found virtually no reduction in sces after numerous rounds with feedback CITATION
MISC are people's abilities to learn to avoid sces-based on feedback-really as bleak as this prior research might suggest
AIMX we argue that some shared circumstances are more transparently shared than others, and this may affect how readily people learn to avoid the bias that creates sces-and how easily they can transfer this learning to a slightly new set of shared circumstances
OWNX by transparently shared, we are referring to how obvious it is that a circumstance that is helpful or hindering to the self will affect others in largely the same way
AIMX in the present study, we examined the influence of repeated feedback on sces
OWNX however, unlike past research, we used a competition in which the difficulty of the shared circumstance relative to competitions, for example, involving easy and hard trivia categories is more transparently shared
OWNX in a multi-round paradigm, participants competed in object-tossing competitions
OWNX in each round, two competitors each had 8 throws per object-attempting to land the object inside a target area
OWNX there was always one easy-to-aim object e g , a beanbag and one hard-to-aim object e g , a paper plate, which constituted our shared-circumstance manipulation
OWNX full feedback was given during and after each round, and predictions were solicited before each round and also before a final round with novel objects
OWNX we suspected that a tossing competition, rather than a trivia competition, would produce less bleak results about the debiasing of sces through repeated play
MISC in the case of trivia, watching one's competitor fail to answer trivia questions doesn't give any insight about why the category is difficult for that person
MISC also, knowing that one's competitor struggled on a difficult category does not provide obvious information about why he or she might struggle on another difficult category
MISC however, in the case of throwing, watching a competitor fail when tossing an object probably illuminates the relevance of specific shared, situational circumstances i e , the properties of the specific objects as well as a more general awareness of the relevance that object properties have on throwing success-for anyone
MISC for example, seeing a paper plate fly unpredictably will likely give an observer a clear impression that the object will fly unpredictably regardless of who is throwing it
MISC for participants, this enhances the appreciation that one's struggles are not primarily due to personal characteristics but to properties of the tossed objects; this would then be useful in mitigating egocentrism and sces, even when new objects are introduced
OWNX consequently, we expected that, even though participants might reveal a robust sce at round 1 prior to any feedback or observations regarding their competitor, they would show a pronounced learning effect after the feedback and observations of round 1
OWNX that is, they would show significantly reduced sces starting immediately after round 1
OWNX we also expected that this learning would be generally transferable
