Affective forecasting: roughly translated into Dutch, it means predicting feelings. Psychologists wondered how good people are at predicting their own feelings. What turned out? Most people think feelings last longer than they actually do. What exactly is affective forecasting and why are people bad at predicting their feelings? How can affective forecasting be reflected in practice?
- What is affective forecasting?
- Why are we not good at predicting our feelings?
- Affective forecasting in everyday life
What is affective forecasting?
Affective forecasting means predicting feelings. The term was coined by social psychologists Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert. People make decisions based on the feelings they think they will experience in the future. When people really want something, they think that once they have it they will feel good for a long time. The same applies the other way around; people don’t want something and if it happens anyway, they think that the negative emotion will last a long time. (Wilson, T. & Gilbert, D., 2005).
Affective forecasting can be divided into four categories:
- Predicting the value of the emotion that we think we will experience in the future: This means; how important do we think a certain emotion will be for us in the future? Will happiness be as important to us in the future as it is today? Or do we find another emotion more important?
- Predicting the specific emotion we will feel in the future: This represents the emotion actually felt; we think we will be happy in the future when we take a trip to Africa.
- The duration of the emotion: If we make this trip to Africa in the future, we will be happy about it for a very long time.
- The intensity of the emotion: The joy that comes from taking a trip to Africa is enormous.
(Wilson, T., & Gilbert, D., 2003).
Scientific research has shown that people overestimate how long the predicted emotions last. In addition, people also appear to overestimate the intensity of the predicted emotions. Predicted emotions usually last shorter than expected and are not as intense as people thought. This applies to both positive and negative emotions, with the effect being greater for negative emotions. (Wilson, T. & Gilbert, D., 2005).
Why are we not good at predicting our feelings?
This is firstly due to the focus we have; we tend to overestimate how much we will be concerned with a situation in the future, while we underestimate how much we will be concerned with other situations in the future. If an applicant is rejected after a job interview, he thinks at the time that this will make him feel bad for a long time. He overestimates the impact of the outcome of this conversation and ‘forgets’ how many other situations will arise in the future that will influence his feelings. (Wilson, T. & Gilbert, D., 2005).
Secondly, this has to do with so-called coping strategies that we have as humans. Coping means; the way we deal with events. Without knowing this, we have a lot of these strategies that can be deployed when we experience psychological distress. Our psyche regulates this itself, just like the body does with physical disorders. Think of a scrape; this can be quite painful. Our body ensures that the bleeding stops, that a scab forms on the wound and that the pain goes away. People don’t know that they have so many coping strategies; they do not know that this will help them deal with feelings better. That – because of these strategies – they are much more flexible than they think. Our brains automatically use these strategies when necessary; they are perfectly able to respond to unexpected situations (Fiske, S., 2004).
Affective forecasting in everyday life
When your relationship has just broken up and grief has taken hold of you, it is hard to believe that better times are coming. Yet this is true. You can trust that your psyche also develops a strategy to deal with the negative situation, so that the negative emotion will not last as long as you think. It is also the case
the other way around. Once you have won the lottery, you will notice that you will also receive new wishes. Although you thought beforehand that you would be completely happy after winning the lottery, it turns out that in practice you quickly get used to the situation and feel happy for less time than you previously thought.
It turns out that we not only have a physical immune system, but also a psychological immune system. Because this system functions mainly unconsciously, people do not think about it. We think it is logical that our body reacts. That our psyche does not respond. Why? People think that they mainly regulate their psyche themselves. Affective forecasting has shown that this is not the case.