Intended and unintended overconsumption of physical, spatial, and temporal resources.

Two experiments investigated whether people overconsume nonpartitioned physical, spatial, and temporal resources; whether this overconsumption reflects intended or unintended processes; and whether these processes have adverse inferential and behavioral consequences. In Experiment 1, members of large groups overconsumed nonpartitioned resources of all types, especially nonpartitioned temporal resources. Moreover, these overconsumptions stemmed from both intentional motives as well as from an unintentional perceptual bias. Even when allocated their equal share of a nonpartitioned resource in Experiment 2, members of large groups judged it to be less than their equal share, a perceptual bias that produced pejorative trait inferences and retaliatory overconsumption choices. Theoretical and practical implications for resource management are discussed.