Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection
Van Boven and Ashworth report five experiments in which people reported more intense emotion while anticipating an emotional event than while recalling it. The events were positive, such as Thanksgiving Day, negative, such as annoying noises, routine, and hypothetical, such as an all-expenses-paid ski holiday. The tendency was linked to a slight tendency to expect future emotions to be more intense than remembered past ones, and it was statistically mediated by participants' tendency to simulate the event mentally.
Van Boven and Ashworth report five experiments in which people reported more intense emotion while anticipating an emotional event than while recalling it. The events were positive, such as Thanksgiving Day, negative, such as annoying noises, routine, and hypothetical, such as an all-expenses-paid ski holiday. The tendency was linked to a slight tendency to expect future emotions to be more intense than remembered past ones, and it was statistically mediated by participants' tendency to simulate the event mentally.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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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.