PSYC 336 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Affective Forecasting
8 Dec 2020
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Document Summary
Many decisions depend on a forecast of future emotions. Affective forecasting your predictions for your own emotions. People consistently overestimate how long these feeling will last. Underestimating their ability to adjust to changes in fortune. Underestimating how easily they"ll find excuses and rationalizations for their own mistakes. People generally believe that their current feelings will last longer than they actually will. People underestimate their own ability to adapt. Result they work to avoid things they"d soon get used to anyhow and spend money on things that provide only short-term pleasure. Framing effects leave them open to manipulation and self-contradiction. Errors in affective forecasting guarantee that people will often take steps to avoid regrets that in reality they wouldn"t have felt. Maybe people are incompetent in decision making. Maybe they don"t know what will make them happy. People are unable to move efficiently toward happiness. The best they can do is stumble on happiness .
