Focalism: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting.
Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert and Axsom propose that the durability bias, the tendency to overpredict how long feelings about future events will last, may arise partly from focalism, people focusing too much on the event in question and not enough on the consequences of other future events. If so, asking people to think about other future activities should reduce the bias. In three studies, college football fans were less likely to overpredict how long the result of a game would affect their happiness if they first thought about how much time they would spend on other future activities. Two further studies ruled out alternative explanations and found evidence for a distraction interpretation, in which people who think about other events moderate their forecasts because they believe those events will reduce thinking about the focal one. The authors discuss implications for other literatures, such as the planning fallacy.
Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert and Axsom propose that the durability bias, the tendency to overpredict how long feelings about future events will last, may arise partly from focalism, people focusing too much on the event in question and not enough on the consequences of other future events. If so, asking people to think about other future activities should reduce the bias. In three studies, college football fans were less likely to overpredict how long the result of a game would affect their happiness if they first thought about how much time they would spend on other future activities. Two further studies ruled out alternative explanations and found evidence for a distraction interpretation, in which people who think about other events moderate their forecasts because they believe those events will reduce thinking about the focal one. The authors discuss implications for other literatures, such as the planning fallacy.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-27 in the paper's PDF at Harvard.
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Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T., Meyers, J. M., Gilbert, D. T., & Axsom, D. (2000). Focalism: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 821-836. PubMed 10821192