Affective forecasting
This report explains the common mistakes we make when predicting the intensity and duration of our own and others’ feelings and the implications this has for global priorities research.
This report was produced as part of the Happier Lives Institute’s 2021 Summer Research Fellowship
Summary
- People make mistakes when predicting the intensity and duration of their own and others’ feelings.
- These error-prone intuitions in ‘affective forecasting’ have implications for donors, researchers, and policymakers interested in doing the most good with their money and time.
- We underestimate the importance of global priorities that are resistant to hedonic adaptation and difficult to mentally simulate (to ‘put ourselves in other shoes’).
- Mental illness and chronic pain are the most likely causes that are under-valued. Other candidates include drug addiction, and possibly animal welfare and longtermism.
- In order to avoid such biases, global priorities researchers should use subjective measures of how people actually feel about their lives, rather than making intuitive assumptions.
Table 1: An overview of affective forecasting biases in this report
| Component | Bias | Definition |
| Intensity | Intensity bias | The tendency to anticipate more intense hedonic reactions than people experience (Buehler & McFarland, 2001). |
| Future anhedonia | The belief that hedonic states will be less intense in the future than in the present (Kassam et al., 2008). | |
| Duration | Durability bias | The tendency to overpredict the duration of affective reactions to future events (Wilson et al., 2000). |
| Region-beta paradox | The tendency for intense hedonic states to abate more quickly than mild states (Gilbert et al., 2004). | |
| Projection | Projection bias | The exaggeration of the degree to which people’s future tastes will resemble their current tastes. (Loewenstein et al., 2003). |
| Empathy gaps | The tendency for people to mispredict how they (or others) will behave in a different mental state (Sayette et al., 2008). |