Affective forecasting refers to our attempt to imagine a future event and predict how we’re going to feel about it when it occurs. The term and the research on it may be relatively new, but we engage in the process whenever we attempt to determine a course of action. The results of numerous studies on affective forecasting reveal that (1) we’re not very good at it, (2) we don’t know we’re not very good at it, and so (3) we keep making the same mistakes when pursuing what we think will make us happy. The term for this coined by Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson is miswanting.
The reason we’re not very good at predicting our future feelings is that we routinely make all kinds of errors, some of which are described below. First the good news: we’re generally good at predicting whether a future experience will be positive or negative. And when we make short-term (tomorrow) versus long-term (a year from now) predictions, we’re pretty good at accurately identifying the emotions we’re likely to feel when we experience an event.
Impact
What we’re not very good at is predicting how intense our feelings will be and how long they will last. This prediction error is known as the impact bias.
Whether people overestimate how good or bad they will feel, overestimate how quickly those feelings will arise, or underestimate how quickly they will dissipate, the important point is that they overestimate how powerfully the event will impact their emotional lives—Timothy D. Wilson, Daniel T. Gilbert (2003)
So we tend to believe that both positive and negative events will affect us more intensely and that the duration of those effects will be longer than they’re likely to be. We think that getting the new job, the guy/girl, the new house/car, or winning the lottery will cause us to feel fantastic for the foreseeable future. We think not getting the job, failing a test, losing a friend, or experiencing a financial setback will cause us to feel devastated for the foreseeable future.
Big vs. Small
We believe that a bigger problem will have a bigger negative effect on us than a smaller, chronic problem or minor annoyance will. But that doesn’t turn out to be the case for a couple of reasons. One is that we tend to respond to and take care of the bigger problems but often let the smaller ones drag on and annoy us indefinitely. The other is that we have a so-called psychological immune system that’s triggered by big problems to help us cope with them.
Misconstrual
In order to predict how we’re likely to feel about something, we need to be able to imagine the event. That’s easier to do if we’ve experienced it or something similar in the past. If we’ve been to a lot of parties, we can imagine—in general—how we’ll feel about attending a party on Saturday. If we’ve cleaned out the garage before, we can imagine how we’ll feel about doing that on Saturday, too. But if we haven’t experienced an event, what we imagine or expect may not bear much resemblance to the way the actual event unfolds. Thinking we can predict the future leads us to believe in the veracity of what we imagine.
Memory
Even if we’re able to imagine an event because we’ve experienced it before, our memory of it—and how we felt at the time—may be faulty simply because it’s the nature of memory to be faulty. And the feelings we experience when remembering a past event are not necessarily the same feelings we had when the event took place. Additionally, when we don’t recall actual details of an event, we may come to rely instead on our beliefs or theories about how such an event will make us feel.
Variability
When trying to decide where to vacation, which movie to see, or which house to buy, we tend to focus on, compare, and overestimate the differences between various options and underestimate their similarities. Furthermore, the order in which people are asked to think about differences vs. similarities has been found to influence the accuracy of their affective forecasting. Those who thought last about the similarities tended to be happier about their choices.
Hot vs. Cold States
When we’re in a “hot” emotional state (anxious, fearful, hungry, courageous, or sexually excited, for example), we have a hard time predicting what we will want when we’re in a “cold” (more rational) state—and vice versa. That means when we’re in a cold state—satiated, for example—we’re likely to predict we’ll have enough willpower to avoid binging on the bag of potato chips we’re picking up at the supermarket. But later that evening, when we’re hungry—in a hot state—we do, in fact, binge eat.
These mistakes—which arise because of the way we’re wired, not because there’s something wrong with us—aren’t the only mistakes we make when trying to predict what will make us happy or sad in the future. But hopefully they help clarify why it’s so hard to make accurate predictions and why we’re often disappointed by the choices we make.
Next time: The Other Problem with Affective Forecasting
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