Affective Forecasting: Knowing What to Want
Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert review research on affective forecasting, the prediction of how future events will make people feel. They report that people tend to overstate how intense and how long-lasting their future feelings will be, a pattern called the impact bias, and that it is strongest for negative events. One cause is focalism, underestimating how much other events will shape thoughts and feelings. Another is failing to foresee how quickly people make sense of what happened, which speeds recovery.
Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert review research on affective forecasting, the prediction of how future events will make people feel. They report that people tend to overstate how intense and how long-lasting their future feelings will be, a pattern called the impact bias, and that it is strongest for negative events. One cause is focalism, underestimating how much other events will shape thoughts and feelings. Another is failing to foresee how quickly people make sense of what happened, which speeds recovery.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-22 (repository record).
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Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(3), 131-134. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x