1.2: Affective Forcasting
- Page ID
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This Psychology Today article¹³ explores the concept of affective forecasting, examining how individuals predict and anticipate their emotional reactions to future events, often with notable inaccuracies. Timothy Wison and Daniel Gilbert also discuss affective forecasting in this paper called, Knowing What to Want¹⁴ (2005).
An important point should be considered regarding happiness.People are often poor at affective forecasting: predicting the intensity and duration of their future emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003)¹⁵. In one study, nearly all newlywed spouses predicted their marital satisfaction would remain stable or improve over the following four years; despite this high level of initial optimism, their marital satisfaction actually declined during this period (Lavner, Karner, & Bradbury, 2013)¹⁶.
In addition, we are often incorrect when estimating how our long-term happiness would change for the better or worse in response to certain life events. For example, it is easy for many of us to imagine how euphoric we would feel if we won the lottery, were asked on a date by an attractive celebrity, or were offered our dream job. It is also easy to understand how long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which had not won a World Series championship since 1908, thought they would feel permanently elated when their team finally won another World Series in 2016. Likewise, it is easy to predict that we would feel permanently miserable if we suffered a disabling accident or if a romantic relationship ended. (Spielman et al., 2020)³⁰.
Watch Dan Gilbert, a very well known affective forecasting researcher discuss The surprising science of happiness¹⁷ in his 2012 TED Talk.
- What is Affective Forecasting?
- What is an impact bias and why is it important?
- Are people good or bad at forecasting their future happiness? Why or why not?
- What is "sense making" and how is it relevant to negative events?
predicting the intensity and duration of their future emotions
Attribution
¹³Psychology Today. (n.d.). Affective Forecasting. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/affective-forecasting
¹⁴Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective Forecasting: Knowing What to Want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x
¹⁵Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2003). Affective forecasting. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, (Volume 35, 345–411). Elsevier Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(03)01006-2
¹⁶Lavner, J. A., Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (2013). Newlyweds' optimistic forecasts of their marriage: for better or for worse?. Journal of family psychology, 27(4), 531–540. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033423
¹⁷TED. (2012, April 26). The surprising science of happiness | Dan Gilbert [Video]. https://youtu.be/4q1dgn_C0AU?si=B4TlEgBFjNjLtrq9
²⁹,³⁰,³¹,³²Emmons, R. A. (2024). Positive psychology. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/9z4jf5xe CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0