Affective Forecasting and the Pleasures of Uncertainty

Many important decisions, such as what job to accept, who to marry, and where to go on vacation, are based on affective forecasts--people’s predictions about their emotional reactions to future events. One error people often make is the impact bias, the tendency to overestimate the enduring impact that future events will have on their emotional reactions. I will review research documenting the impact bias and several of its causes. I will focus on the inexorable human tendency to make sense of novel events, in ways that rob them of their emotional power. By failing to anticipate the extent to which they will psychologically transform novel, exciting events into ordinary, mundane ones, people overestimate the enduring emotional impact these events will have. One implication of this argument is that if people can be prevented from making sense of positive events, the pleasure that these events cause might be prolonged. I will present evidence for this “pleasure of uncertainty effect” and discuss its implications.