Affective Forecasting PSYC 385

Affective Forecasting - Definition The ability to predict our future emotional states. Stated briefly, we suck at it. e.g., Christmas Expected an amazing time Hadn’t seen fam in a while Going to see neices, nephew, bro, family, friends, Was that the way things went?

Creation of Affective Forecasts

Components of Forecasts Valence Specific emotions Intensity Duration Valence: The direction (+ve/-ve) that our future emotional states will be. We’re pretty good at it. I knew it was going to be a good time at Christmas. Specific Emotions: What emotions we will experience when thinking about certain situations. We can predict broad emotions like happy after watching a comedy (or annoyed while shopping) Unfortunately, we’re too broad in our predictions to really get down to the nitty-gritty of emotions Intensity & Duration We suck at it We usually predict greater intensity and duration than actually happens Why do you think this might be? The bulk of research on affective forecasting focuses on this question.

Impact Bias The tendency to overestimate the enduring impact that future events will have on our emotional reactions. Overestimation of how good or bad you’ll feel; Overestimate how quickly feelings arise Underestimate how quickly they’ll dissipate Sure, this is in research, but it doesn’t affect me. Wilson & Gilbert (2003) report these findings among everyone from university students to snake phobics. One study was of the 2008 US election. McCain supporters over predicted their negative affect. Obama supporters under predicted their positive affect. (Norris, Dumville, & Lacy, 2011)

Neglecting Other Outcomes Focalism: Tendency to focus on just the emotional experience at hand, neglecting the extent to which unrelated events will also be affecting their thoughts and emotions. Misconstrual problem: sometimes people will mistakenly imagine the wrong event. People focus on the one outcome, ignoring/neglecting to simulate other outcomes Focalism Study: Football team’s win Wilson et al. (2000) had ptps write down how they think they’d feel if their football team won (for that day & the next 2-3 days following) 2 months before it happened. When the team did win, these people’s predictions were incorrect because by the day after they had returned to baseline. Other people were reminded of everything they would have to do during those days (school, driving, eating, talking with people, working, etc.) and then wrote their predictions. These people were far more correct. e.g., Xmas - only wanted to imagine roasting chestnuts, presents, adorable neices. Ignored shoveling snow, being cold, people being busy, etc. Misconstrual problem Wilson & Gilbert’s (2003) example is a woman who imagines a painless birth, but has a pain filled 24 hr marathon C-section

Differences > similarities Isolation effect: occurs when people disregard components that the alternatives share and focus on the components that distinguish them. When comparing two scenarios, people usually focus on what differentiates them, not what makes them similar. In other words, people often compare what they think is gonna happen to an opposite extreme Study – Dunn, Wilson, & Gilbert asked 1st years to predict how they’d feel living in certain dorms. The question was framed as a comparison and people were more likely to compare the house on physical than social features (which would be the same). 1 yr later, people rated their happiness with their dorms. They reported more on the social atmosphere than the distinguishing physical features. The power of the isolation effect can be harnessed by having people focus on what will actually influence their future emotion states.

Past Experiences Don’t remember enough information about our previous emotional states Peak & end rules We code our past experiences cognitively as simple emotions. We don’t remember the intensity of the emotions. Usually just a simple positive or negative. i.e., colonscopy or blood test Often remember just the best/worst moment and the end.

Impossible to Predict Future Projection Bias How you feel now is not how you feel later

Affective Experiences Construal - Misconstrual problem Isolation effect – framing effects Recall is not reliable I won’t go into the nitty-gritty of how people experience their emotions, but I’ll talk about some relevant processes that influence/inform our affective forecasts.

Expectation Effects Expectations influence outcomes Self-fulfilling prophecy Occur when our affective forecasts influence our experiences. Tofino…my expectations of the beer & friends being good helped make it good. If you expect a movie to be good, that will probably influence your experience of it.

Where else we go wrong Hot & cold states Groceries while hungry Similar to how our emotional states influence our predictions. Our current emotional/affective states influence our experiences. Imagine being hungry & grocery shopping.

Emotional evanescence Adaptation level theories People orient towards unexpected but relevant info in their environment Experience more intense emotional reactions to unexpected, relevant info than to other events Once an unexpected event occurs and people have a relatively intense emotional reaction, they attempt to make sense of the event, quickly and automatically When people make sense of an event it no longer seems surprising or unexpected, and as a result they think about it less and it produces a less intense emotional reaction Sense making processes serve to temper people’s emotional reactions. People experience highly intense emotions at times of death, birth, marriage, etc. This inevitably fades, which is an effect known as emotional evanescence Adaptation level theories - Could be due to comparing current situation to the close past. As time passes, the close past becomes more & more similar to the current & therefore the feelings fade. Exception - can’t explain intense feelings at repeated exposure (e.g., exhilarated after 10th A+) 4 – aka ordinization We need them. No possible way to stop & consider every situation they’re ever in. We don’t have the cognitive resources. Create approach/avoidance shortcuts People don’t think about these things. e.g., Wilson, Kermer, & Gilbert (2002) had RAs approach people in a library & give them a dollar with a note. Some notes said “The Smile Society; A Student/Community Secular Alliance; We like to promote random acts of kindness.” Other notes said the same info, but added “Why we are doing this” before “We like to promote random acts of kindness. People in the uncertain condition reported higher mood 5 min. later. People in the certain condition were the same as the control condition who didn’t receive the dollar. Other people were approached in the library and asked what they would feel like if they got a dollar handed to them randomly, they rated even higher expectations. Thus, people expect that if you can make sense of events you’ll experience enhanced mood and more pleasure, but it’s the opposite.

Psychological Immune System We have many psychological defenses that detect and neutralize events that challenge people’s sense of well-being. Not a conscious process helps us deal with the negative experiences in life. We have many psychological defenses that detect and neutralize events that challenge people’s sense of well-being. Occurs outside of awareness - Not a conscious process If we did realize the rationalization while it was occurring, it wouldn’t be as effective or compelling. e.g., after a break up you may start to notice the things that were wrong with the person. If this process occurred consciously, “today I’m going to forget about that person by thinking only of the times they picked their nose in front of me,” you would know that it’s happening and potentially reject it.

Immune Neglect Similar to ordinization Do you think negative feedback will feel terrible? When we forget this, we’ll attribute our reduced dissonance to external factors Study - Interview for a job. Either 1 interviewer asking “why’d you choose your major?” (unfair, easy to rationalize) or 3 who needed an unanimous decision (fair, harder to rationalize). Asked to predict what they would feel like if they didn’t get it and how they would feel 10 min afterwards (both groups predicted the same). Told they didn’t get it. Both felt bad, but people in the unfair, easy to rationalize condition were happier than they predicted 10 min later. Would you expect it to be easier to overcome a harsh or mild negative occurance? People predict very negative feedback to produce greater negative affect than mild negative feedback (Kuwayama & Kudo, 2010) Experiencers report that they are about the same Those who only imagined receiving feedback (forecasters) predicted their affective states would be more negative five minutes after very negative feedback than after mildly negative feedback. However, the affective states of those who actually received very negative and mildly negative feedback (experiencers) differed less than those of forecasters and were less negative than the forecasters' predictions. Furthermore, predictions of an average student's feelings indicated that experiencers predicted that an average student's negative affective state would last longer than their own. - Experiencers predicted that average students would feel worse for longer

Summary of Errors Impact bias is the tendency to overestimate the enduring impact that future events will have on our emotional reactions. Focalism is failing to recognize how much extraneous events and circumstances will influence them when predicting affect in future states Misconstrual effect Isolation effect is focusing on differences, ignoring similarities Projection Bias Current emotional states Recall Problems Expectation effects Hot/cold states Ordinization neglect is forgetting that we will adapt to positive experiences quicker than we would expect Immune neglect is failing to recall that we have a psychological immune system which will help us to rationalize and adapt to negative events.

Why don’t we learn? Recall is subject to same biases Intensity & duration are remembered incorrectly Focalism Wilson & Gilbert’s example was recall of Cardinal’s win, “It was nice when the Cardinals won and their victory dominated my thoughts, but they were destined to win it all that year."

How can we improve? Research on prediction suggests: Adopting an outside view Performing some cognitive repairs Aggregating Predictions