What-if analysis and the illusion of control

The research presented hypothesizes that what-if analysis creates an `illusion of control´ which causes people to overestimate its effectiveness. The study reported found that what-if analysis improved performance for about half of the subjects and degraded performance for the rest in a simulated production scheduling task. However, all subjects but one reported believing what-if to be beneficial to their decision performance. Erroneous beliefs persisted in the face of outcome feedback showing inferior performance when what-if analysis was used. In light of other research linking user acceptance to users´ performance perceptions, these results indicate the potential for sustained but dysfunctional use of what-if analysis due to overconfidence