What Anticipation Actually Adds

18 October 2026 · Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Looking forward to something is a real pleasure with a measurable size, and the size is smaller and far more lopsided than the saying suggests. The wait rarely beats the buy, but it does change what the buy is worth.

Answer to the question

Is anticipation better than the purchase itself?

Sometimes, and only for some buyers. Marsha Richins found in 2013 that high-materialism consumers showed rising emotion before a purchase and falling emotion after it, while low-materialism consumers did not, and her own wording is that anticipating may be more pleasurable than ownership. The best-evidenced finding runs the other way: savouring an experience raises the enjoyment of it while it happens and in memory afterwards.

Key takeaways

In Loewenstein's 1987 survey of 30 undergraduates, a hypothetical kiss from a chosen movie star was worth roughly 1.8 times as much at a three-day delay as it was immediately, while the money items in the same survey discounted normally.
The dial is lopsided: Hardisty and Weber's 2020 studies found anticipatory utility strongly negative for bad events and only weakly positive for good ones, because impatience subtracts from savouring and adds to dread.
Anticipation usually raises the purchase rather than beating it. Chun and colleagues' 5 studies found that savouring something coming lifts enjoyment of it both as it happens and in memory.
The commercial machinery is thinner than it looks: exactly 1 four-study pre-order paper and 1 ten-week community study stand behind countdowns, drop dates and pre-order pages, and that paper treats delay as a cost to offset.

You have felt it: the Friday before the holiday beats the Tuesday on the beach. Anticipation is real, it is measurable, and it is weaker and far more lopsided than the saying about the wait and the buy promises.

Start with the kiss and the shock

George Loewenstein put the idea into economics in 1987, in a theory paper with three small hypothetical surveys attached. His model adds to the usual arithmetic a term for anticipatory utility, meaning the value a person draws right now from holding a future event in mind.

Two kinds of that value. Savouring is the pleasure of imagining something good coming. Dread is the cost of carrying something bad that has not arrived.

In the first survey, thirty undergraduates said what they would pay for five outcomes at six different delays. Everything was hypothetical and they were told to assume certainty. A kiss from the movie star of their choice peaked at a three-day delay, worth roughly 1.8 times the same kiss immediately.

The money items discounted normally.

Outcome, thirty students, hypothetical	3 hours	24 hours	3 days	1 year	10 years
Kiss from a chosen movie star	1.30	1.59	1.78	1.31	0.64
Electric shock, paid to avoid	1.00	0.99	1.01	1.23	1.84
Four dollars gained	0.93	0.82	0.74	0.46	0.21

The table takes three of those five outcomes at five of the six timings, with the immediate value left out as the baseline it is measured against. Each figure is what the outcome was worth at that delay as a fraction of its value right now. Read the rows against each other and the shape of the thing appears. One good outcome gained value by being postponed. One bad outcome cost more the further off it sat. Money behaved itself.

So the savouring result is narrow by construction: one fleeting, vivid item, thirty students, a survey with nothing at stake. State it with those conditions attached or do not state it.

Alan Watts had made the structural version of the point thirty-six years earlier and in a different register. In chapter II of The Wisdom of Insecurity, called "Pain and Time" and running from page 29 to page 38, Watts argued that a person suffers twice, once in the event and once in the foreseeing, and that the same sensitivity which deepens pleasure deepens dread.

He was writing metaphysics in accessible prose, with eight footnotes across the whole book, and the book has no apparatus that could make it evidence. That is the form the argument is in rather than a failing in it. Watts frames the question here. The research decides it.

Separate the savouring from the impatience

Waiting for something good runs two processes at once, and they pull opposite ways. One is savouring. The other is impatience, the present discomfort of not having the thing yet. David Hardisty and Elke Weber set the pair out explicitly in 2020: for a good event, people enjoy imagining it while simultaneously disliking the feeling of waiting for it.

Net anticipation is what survives the subtraction.

Impatience is also the baseline the whole field starts from. Shane Frederick and colleagues reviewed three decades of work on choices between sooner and later in 2002, noting what they called the spectacular variation in implicit discount rates across studies, which is a reason to quote none of them as a figure. Savouring is the anomaly inside that field rather than its default setting.

Amit Kumar and colleagues measured the mix in 2014 across four studies. Ninety-seven Cornell students asked to think about a purchase coming up rated the wait for an experience as more pleasant than the wait for a possession, and described themselves as more excited than impatient about it. Both ratings sat on the positive side. In the authors' own words, waiting to receive a material good is, not surprisingly, a positive experience, and their claim concerns a difference in the amount of enjoyment.

Their second study pinged 2,266 adults at random moments through the day. A future purchase was on the mind at about nineteen of every hundred probes. Experiential purchases scored higher on happiness, pleasantness and excitement, and the authors say plainly that the effects, although statistically significant, are not huge.

The fourth study flipped the sign. Students recalling a real queue they had stood in rated waiting for an experience mildly pleasant and waiting for a possession mildly unpleasant. A follow-up with more than thirteen thousand responses reproduced the pleasantness and excitement differences, and found nothing the study could detect on happiness.

So the difference is more than one of degree. Whether the wait is pleasant at all can turn on what is coming.

There is no evidence here of two kinds of anticipation. The same anticipation is tilted differently by what is coming, which is exactly why the authors asked about pleasantness separately from excitement. Impatience and excitement are not two ends of one dial.

Rate the same holiday three times

Terence Mitchell and colleagues ran the only studies in this material that rated the same events before, during and after: a trip to Europe, a Thanksgiving holiday and a three-week bicycle trip in California. Expectations beforehand ran above the experience as people scored it while it was happening. Recollection afterwards ran above it too. The dip was credited to distractions, disappointment and a less positive view of the self during the event, and within days the event had been marked up again.

We have written before about how a holiday is remembered, which is the backward half of that result. The forward half, expectations running above the event itself, is newer ground.

Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth asked a narrower question in 2007 and got a clean answer from five experiments. People reported more intense feeling before Thanksgiving Day, before annoying noises and before a hypothetical all-expenses-paid ski holiday than they did looking back on any of them. The effect was mediated by how much more extensively they simulated the future than the past.

The intensity ran in both directions.

That is the single place where Watts's symmetry survives contact with data. Anticipation is louder than memory whether the thing coming is a ski holiday or a burst of noise. Sign and size are where it comes apart.

A Dutch study measured 1,530 people before and after, 974 of them taking a holiday. Vacationers were happier than non-vacationers before the trip, which the authors attributed, possibly, to their anticipating it. After the trip there was generally no difference between the groups, unless the holiday had been a very relaxed one. The comparison runs between people rather than within a person, so it is suggestive and not a demonstration.

Ask whether the wait beats the buy

Marsha Richins ran the one study that tests the headline directly, across two snapshot studies and one that followed buyers over time. High-materialism consumers showed a rise in product-evoked emotion before buying and a fall after it. Low-materialism consumers did not show the pattern. Her own conclusion keeps its hedge: for these consumers, the state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more pleasurable than product ownership itself.

Read the scope condition, not the headline.

That finding travels only with both qualifiers attached, the materialism of the buyer and the word may. Strip either and it turns into a general law of buying, which nothing in the record supports.

The strongest brake comes from HaeEun Helen Chun and colleagues in 2017. Across five studies they found that savouring something coming raises enjoyment of it while it unfolds and raises enjoyment of it in memory afterwards. The proposed mechanism is that savouring lays down affective traces which are reactivated during and after consumption, and interfering with the forming or the retrieving of those traces limited the effect.

Anticipation added to the purchase rather than beating it.

Stephen Nowlis and colleagues had already found the condition that decides which way it goes. Across three studies in 2004, a delay between choosing and consuming raised enjoyment of pleasurable products when the consumption actually happened, and lowered it when the consumption was only imagined, with the vividness of the awaited product governing the size of both effects.

Both sides deserve their strongest form. On one side, the only study designed to compare before with after found the before higher, among the buyers most invested in what buying would do for them. On the other, the best-evidenced work on pre-purchase pleasure finds it feeding forward into the thing bought rather than substituting for it. We go with the second. Five studies on raising consumption rest on firmer ground than one conditional finding on replacing it, and the two results are compatible, because savouring can be the best part of a thin purchase and an amplifier of a good one.

Watch the dial run lopsided

Hardisty and Weber's three studies, with twelve supplemental studies and a pair of field studies using online retirement-planning advertisements, found anticipation pushing against impatience in a way that does not balance. For bad events, anticipatory utility is strongly negative, so people want to get the thing over with. For good events, the net is only weakly positive, and therefore does little to reduce the wish to have it sooner.

Their own sentence is the one to keep:

> For negative events, anticipatory utility is strongly negative, reducing the desire to delay bad things, but for positive events, overall anticipatory utility is weakly positive, and therefore does little to reduce consumers' desire to expedite good things.

Impatience subtracts from savouring and adds to dread.

Impatience subtracts from savouring and adds to dread. The dial that deepens pleasure and dread together, turned by one hand, is not what the measurements show.

That sentence is why the title of this piece changed. A dial that deepens pleasure and dread together, turned by one hand, is not what the measurements show. It deepens dread considerably harder.

Chris Dawson and Samuel Johnson reached the same direction from survey data in 2026, finding that displeasure from anticipating future losses outweighs the pleasure from anticipating equal gains, with the most asymmetric people also the most risk-avoidant and the most impatient. They describe their own evidence as suggestive.

Dread has also been measured with a mechanism attached. Gregory Berns and five colleagues scanned people waiting for a cutaneous electric shock in 2006 and reported that some dreaded the outcome so much that, given the choice, they preferred to receive more voltage rather than wait. Extreme dreaders differed from mild ones in the rate at which activity rose in posterior parts of the cortical pain matrix, which the authors read as attention paid to the expected physical response rather than fear alone.

Giles Story and colleagues gave the function a shape in 2013, using choices between numbers of painful shocks at delays up to fifteen minutes, and hypothetical dental appointments at delays up to about eight months. Future pain grew more aversive as the delay lengthened, at a decreasing rate, and for a minority the worst option sat at an intermediate delay. Framing the outcome as relief reduced the preference to get it over with. A 2014 correction to that paper has not been retrieved here, so no figure from it is quoted.

Kate Sweeny and Angelica Falkenstein tested the suffers-twice idea most precisely in 2015, following law graduates waiting for bar-exam results that turned out badly. Anxiety was higher in the waiting than in the face of the news. Anger, disappointment, depression and regret were all more intense after it. Suffering twice survives that test. The foreseeing being the worse of the two halves does not.

Follow the money to the pre-order page

Sellers behave as though waiting were a cost, and the only experimental pre-order literature agrees with them. Amaradri Mukherjee and colleagues ran three online experiments and one retail store field experiment, with an internal pooling of results across them. Their framing is that a longer pre-order delay produces negative responses, which promotion loaded with feeling has to offset: giving something away, positioning the product as the more pleasurable choice, or creating anticipatory buzz.

Delay is a friction the seller pays to reduce.

In the only field-tested pre-order research, delay is a friction the seller pays to reduce, not a pleasure the seller is handing you.

The service literature has said as much for thirty years. Shirley Taylor's 1994 model, tested on delayed airline passengers, found that delays do affect how a service is judged, and that the effect runs through bad feeling about the delay, specifically uncertainty and anger, rather than through the lost time itself.

Against that sits one piece of fieldwork from inside a real wait. Gerard Ryan and colleagues spent ten weeks in a public Facebook group formed around the pre-launch of a pocket synthesiser, watching the community rather than testing it, and describe emotional engagement as cyclical rather than steadily fading, with peaks and lulls as members narrate delays, reassure each other and celebrate arrivals. Being qualitative, it carries no numbers.

Which leaves the commercial machinery thinner than it looks. Countdown timers, drop dates, release-day queues and pre-order pages all run on an intuition with one four-study paper and one ten-week community study behind it. We searched for a countdown study and did not find one, which is not the same as there being none.

Hold the limits in view

Most of the studies behind this piece were read as abstracts only, because no legitimate full text was reachable. Sample sizes for those are not stated here and none has been inferred. Loewenstein's 1987 paper and the 2014 study of waiting for experiences were read in full, which is why their numbers carry the detail.

The experiential advantage those studies sit inside has been pooled. Evan Weingarten and Joseph Goodman combined 360 effect sizes from 141 studies, published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2021 after appearing in advance in 2020. They found an advantage for experiences over possessions that is small once about a third of it, possibly attributable to publication bias, is set aside. It is smaller still for negative experiences, for solitary ones, for lower-socioeconomic-status consumers, and where an experience does the same practical job as a possession.

The arrival fallacy has no primary literature at all.

The phrase belongs to popular writing, commonly attributed to a 2007 trade book we have not verified, and it appears here only as a name some readers will recognise. No study stands behind it.

Two of our own pieces sit beside this one and neither covers its ground. One follows the decay curve after the transaction, and the other, on how wanting and liking come apart, separates two brain systems rather than two moments in time. This article stays on the near side of the till.

What is at stake is who gets paid for the waiting. The wait is worth something real and worth protecting, and it is worth most for experiences, for fleeting and vivid goods, and for people who expect a purchase to change their lives, which is precisely the group a seller finds easiest to charge for the imagining. Keep that straight and a countdown timer reads differently, as a delay you have agreed to absorb rather than a free gift of extra pleasure, and the evidence says you absorb it best when the thing at the end of the wait actually arrives, because delay raises enjoyment of real consumption and lowers it for the purely imagined kind.

Common questions

Is anticipation better than the purchase itself?

Is waiting for bad news worse than the news itself?

Not in the way the saying implies. David Hardisty and Elke Weber found in 2020 that anticipatory feeling is strongly negative for bad events and only weakly positive for good ones, so dread outweighs savouring. Kate Sweeny's bar-exam study adds a limit: anxiety was higher in the waiting, while anger, disappointment, depression and regret were all more intense once the news arrived.

Do pre-orders and countdowns actually add pleasure?

There is almost no evidence either way. The only experimental pre-order research, four studies led by Amaradri Mukherjee in 2021, treats delay as a cost that promotions have to offset rather than a pleasure the seller is giving you. One ten-week study of a pre-launch group describes the wait as sociable and cyclical. No countdown-timer study was found.

Is the arrival fallacy a real finding?

No. The phrase has no primary research literature behind it. A search of the scholarly record turns up only metaphorical and unreviewed uses, and the term is commonly attributed to a 2007 popular book we have not verified. The related measured findings are rosy projection, from Terence Mitchell's 1997 field studies, and anticipatory asymmetry.

Sources

Loewenstein, G. (1987). 'Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption.' The Economic Journal, 97(387), 666-684. doi:10.2307/2232929. [FULL TEXT READ, JSTOR scan hosted at cmu.edu; sole author; affiliation printed as University of Chicago; final typescript received September 1986.] Theory paper with three small hypothetical surveys. Adds a term for anticipatory utility to discounted utility, defining savouring as positive utility from anticipating future consumption and dread as negative utility from contemplating the future. Survey 1: 30 undergraduates, five outcomes at six delays, all hypothetical and assumed certain; Appendix 1 means as a fraction of immediate value: kiss 1.30, 1.59, 1.78, 1.31, 0.64 (peak at three days, roughly 1.8 times immediate); electric shock 1.00, 0.99, 1.01, 1.23, 1.84; four dollars gained 0.93, 0.82, 0.74, 0.46, 0.21. Voltage is discrepant inside the paper (text 110, Appendix header 120), so no voltage is given.

Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilovich, T. (2014). 'Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases.' Psychological Science, 25(10), 1924-1931. doi:10.1177/0956797614546556. [FULL TEXT READ, author copy at blogs.cornell.edu; author order confirmed at Crossref, Amit Kumar first (Cornell); Open Materials badge, osf.io/927ak.] Four studies. Study 1: 97 Cornell students, anticipation of an experience rated more pleasant and more excited than impatient, with both means positive; the authors write that waiting to receive a material good is, not surprisingly, a positive experience. Study 2: 2,266 adults in the trackyourhappiness.org experience-sampling project, a future purchase on the mind at 19.1 per cent of probes, 586 purchases coded experiential and 318 material, and the authors note the effects, although statistically significant, are not huge. Study 4: recalled queues, experiential mildly pleasant and material mildly unpleasant. A follow-up with more than 13,000 responses reproduced pleasantness and excitement and found nothing detectable on happiness.

Richins, M. L. (2013). 'When Wanting Is Better than Having: Materialism, Transformation Expectations, and Product-Evoked Emotions in the Purchase Process.' Journal of Consumer Research, 40(1), 1-18. doi:10.1086/669256. [Abstract read in full; sole author confirmed at Crossref.] Two cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal study. High-materialism consumers showed hedonic elevation before purchase and hedonic decline after; low-materialism consumers did not display the pattern. The author's hedged conclusion: for these consumers, the state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more pleasurable than product ownership itself. Sample sizes, measures and follow-up length NOT VERIFIED.

Chun, H. H., Diehl, K., & MacInnis, D. J. (2017). 'Savoring an Upcoming Experience Affects Ongoing and Remembered Consumption Enjoyment.' Journal of Marketing, 81(3), 96-110. doi:10.1509/jm.15.0267. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, HaeEun Helen Chun first, Cornell School of Hotel Administration.] Five studies. Savouring an upcoming experience heightens enjoyment of it both as it unfolds in real time and when it is remembered; proposed mechanism is affective memory traces reactivated during and after consumption. Sample sizes, settings and effect sizes NOT VERIFIED.

Mitchell, T. R., Thompson, L., Peterson, E., & Cronk, R. (1997). 'Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The "Rosy View".' Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(4), 421-448. doi:10.1006/jesp.1997.1333. [Abstract read in full, retrieved verbatim from Northwestern Kellogg's faculty research record because no abstract is deposited at OpenAlex or Crossref; author order confirmed at Crossref, Terence R. Mitchell first.] Three field studies: a trip to Europe, a Thanksgiving vacation and a three-week bicycle trip in California. Expectations ran above the experience as rated during it, and recollection ran above it too; the dip is attributed to distractions, disappointment and a less positive view of the self, and lasts only days. Sample sizes and effect sizes NOT VERIFIED.

Van Boven, L., & Ashworth, L. (2007). 'Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection.' Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(2), 289-300. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.289. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, Leaf Van Boven first.] Five experiments. More intense emotion during anticipation than during retrospection for positive (Thanksgiving Day), negative (annoying noises), routine and hypothetical (all-expenses-paid ski vacation) events, statistically mediated by more extensive mental simulation of the future. Sample sizes and affiliations NOT VERIFIED.

Nawijn, J., Marchand, M. A., Veenhoven, R., & Vingerhoets, A. J. (2010). 'Vacationers Happier, but Most not Happier After a Holiday.' Applied Research in Quality of Life, 5(1), 35-47. doi:10.1007/s11482-009-9091-9. [Abstract read in full; open access, PDF at link.springer.com; Jeroen Nawijn first.] Pre-test/post-test design, 1,530 Dutch individuals, 974 of them vacationers. Vacationers reported higher pre-trip happiness than non-vacationers, possibly because they are anticipating the holiday; generally no post-trip difference unless the trip was very relaxed. Between-person rather than within-person, so suggestive and not a demonstration. Measures and wave interval NOT VERIFIED.

Mukherjee, A., Smith, R. J., & Burton, S. (2021). 'The effect of positive anticipatory utility on product pre-order evaluations and choices.' Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 51(3), 551-569. doi:10.1007/s11747-021-00810-1. [Abstract read in full from the authors' institutional record at PDXScholar; author order confirmed at Crossref, Amaradri Mukherjee first, Portland State; published online 20 September 2021, in print May 2023.] Four studies: three controlled online experiments plus one retail store field experiment, with an internal meta-analysis. Treats pre-order delay as a cost: affect-laden marketing tools attenuate the negative effects of longer pre-order delays. Claims to be the first research examining positive anticipatory utility on purchase decisions before availability. Sample sizes, retail setting and effect sizes NOT VERIFIED.

Nowlis, S. M., Mandel, N., & McCabe, D. B. (2004). 'The Effect of a Delay between Choice and Consumption on Consumption Enjoyment.' Journal of Consumer Research, 31(3), 502-510. doi:10.1086/425085. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, Stephen M. Nowlis first.] Three studies. A delay increases consumption enjoyment for pleasurable products when actual consumption occurs, but decreases enjoyment for imagined consumption, with the vividness of the awaited product moderating both. Sample sizes, products and effect sizes NOT VERIFIED.

Taylor, S. F. (1994). 'Waiting for Service: The Relationship between Delays and Evaluations of Service.' Journal of Marketing, 58(2), 56-69. doi:10.1177/002224299405800205. [Abstract read in full; sole author, Shirley Taylor, Queen's University; Crossref gives pages 56-69 and is correct against OpenAlex.] Model of the wait experience tested on delayed airline passengers. Delays do affect service evaluations, mediated by negative affective reactions to the delay, specifically uncertainty and anger. Sample size and airline NOT VERIFIED.

Ryan, G., Pamies, M.-del-M., & Valverde, M. (2025). 'The joys of waiting: how consumers do waiting together.' Marketing Letters, 37(1). doi:10.1007/s11002-025-09798-y. [Abstract read in full; open access, PDF at link.springer.com; Gerard Ryan first; published online 27 November 2025, page numbers not yet assigned.] QUALITATIVE netnography of ten weeks of a public Facebook group formed around the pre-launch of Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operator Modular synthesiser. Distinguishes anticipation from savouring and reports emotional engagement as cyclical rather than steadily fading. Supports no quantitative claim.

Hardisty, D. J., & Weber, E. U. (2020). 'Impatience and Savoring vs. Dread: Asymmetries in Anticipation Explain Consumer Time Preferences for Positive vs. Negative Events.' Journal of Consumer Psychology, 30(4), 598-613. doi:10.1002/jcpy.1169. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, David J. Hardisty first, University of British Columbia; Elke U. Weber, Princeton.] Three studies plus twelve supplemental studies, including a pair of field studies using online retirement-planning advertisements. For negative events anticipatory utility is strongly negative; for positive events it is weakly positive, because people enjoy imagining a good event while disliking the feeling of waiting for it. Sample sizes and advertising platform NOT VERIFIED.

Berns, G. S., Chappelow, J., Cekic, M., Zink, C. F., Pagnoni, G., & Martin-Skurski, M. E. (2006). 'Neurobiological Substrates of Dread.' Science, 312(5774), 754-758. doi:10.1126/science.1123721. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, Gregory S. Berns first, six authors.] Functional MRI of people waiting for a cutaneous electric shock. Some dreaded the outcome so much that, given a choice, they preferred to receive more voltage rather than wait; extreme and mild dreaders differed in the rate of increase of neural activity in posterior elements of the cortical pain matrix. Sample size, voltages and the choice paradigm NOT VERIFIED.

Story, G. W., Vlaev, I., Seymour, B., Winston, J. S., Darzi, A., & Dolan, R. J. (2013). 'Dread and the Disvalue of Future Pain.' PLoS Computational Biology, 9(11), e1003335. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003335. [Abstract read in full; open access; Giles W. Story first. A 2014 correction, doi:10.1371/annotation/2a8ce582-8bb5-4ec9-8665-252fe59e1201, has NOT been retrieved, so no number from the paper is quoted.] Choices between numbers of painful shocks at delays up to 15 minutes and hypothetical dental appointments at delays up to about eight months. Future pain becomes increasingly aversive with delay at a decreasing rate; for a minority pain has maximum negative value at intermediate delay; framing an outcome as relief reduces the preference to expedite pain.

Sweeny, K., & Falkenstein, A. (2015). 'Is Waiting the Hardest Part? Comparing the Emotional Experiences of Awaiting and Receiving Bad News.' Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(11), 1551-1559. doi:10.1177/0146167215601407. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed at Crossref, Kate Sweeny first, both authors UC Riverside.] Two studies; Study 2 followed law graduates awaiting bar-exam results who ultimately failed. Anxiety was higher in anticipation of bad news than in the face of it, whereas other negative emotions were more intense following the news. Sample sizes and emotion measures NOT VERIFIED. Used as an emotion-measurement finding only, never as advice about facing bad news.

Frederick, S., Loewenstein, G., & O'Donoghue, T. (2002). 'Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review.' Journal of Economic Literature, 40(2), 351-401. doi:10.1257/002205102320161311. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed, Shane Frederick first.] REVIEW of three decades of empirical research on intertemporal choice, discussing reasons for the spectacular variation in implicit discount rates across studies. Used for one point: impatience is the default direction of the literature and savouring is the anomaly, and no single discount rate should be quoted.

Weingarten, E., & Goodman, J. K. (2020). 'Re-examining the Experiential Advantage in Consumption: A Meta-Analysis and Review.' Journal of Consumer Research, 47(6), 855-877. doi:10.1093/jcr/ucaa047. [Abstract read in full; author order confirmed, Evan Weingarten first, Arizona State. The year is 2020, not 2021; article #107's study-hub name should be corrected.] META-ANALYSIS, 360 effect sizes from 141 studies. The experiential advantage is moderate, with approximately a third of the effect possibly attributable to publication bias, and is reduced for negative experiences, solitary experiences, lower-socioeconomic-status consumers, and where experiences provide a similar level of utilitarian benefit to material goods.

Dawson, C., & Johnson, S. G. B. (2026). 'Asymmetric Anticipatory Emotions and Economic Preferences: Dread, Savoring, Risk, and Time.' Cognitive Science, 50(1), e70160. doi:10.1111/cogs.70160. [Abstract read in full; open access; Chris Dawson first, University of Bath.] Survey-based and correlational. The tendency to feel displeasure from anticipating future losses outweighs the pleasure from anticipating equal gains, and more strongly asymmetric people are more risk-avoidant and more impatient. The authors describe their own evidence as suggestive. Cited for direction, not magnitude.

Watts, A. (1951/2021). The Wisdom of Insecurity. Rider (Ebury, Penguin Random House), ISBN 978-1-84604-701-5. Chapter II, 'Pain and Time', pp. 29-38. [Vault read-through to page 152 with reliability audit, Books/The Wisdom of Insecurity/The Wisdom of Insecurity.md.] Cited for what Watts argued and never as evidence for a psychological finding, per the book's standing rule in the vault.

NOT VERIFIED, recorded as a null: the 'arrival fallacy' has no primary literature. An OpenAlex search for the phrase returns only Keener (2015) in Digital Humanities Quarterly using it metaphorically, an unreviewed 2026 Zenodo preprint, and unrelated physics. The term is popular writing, commonly attributed to Tal Ben-Shahar's 'Happier' (2007), which has NOT been verified and which the vault does not hold.

NOT VERIFIED, recorded as a null: no countdown-timer, release-date or drop-date study was found across OpenAlex and the web. The only peer-reviewed pre-order work with experiments is Mukherjee, Smith and Burton (2021) and the only pre-launch fieldwork is Ryan, Pamies and Valverde (2025), which is qualitative.

NOT VERIFIED, recorded as a null: no replication attempt or failed replication of Kumar, Killingsworth and Gilovich (2014) was located. Absence of a located replication is not evidence that none exists, and the article does not call the finding unreplicated.