People try to make decisions that will improve their lives and make them happy, and to do so, they rely on affective forecasts-predictions about how future outcomes will make them feel. Decades of research suggest that people are poor at predicting how they will feel and that they commonly overestimate the impact that future events will have on their emotions. Recent work reveals considerable variability in forecasting accuracy. This investigation tested a model of affective forecasting that captures this variability in bias by differentiating emotional intensity, emotional frequency, and mood. Two field studies examined affective forecasting in college students receiving grades on a midterm exam (Study 1, N ϭ 643), and U.S. citizens after the outcome of the 2016 presidential election (Study 2, N ϭ 706). Consistent with the proposed model, participants were more accurate in forecasting the intensity of their emotion and less accurate in forecasting emotion frequency and mood. Overestimation of the effect of the event on mood increased over time since the event. Three experimental studies examined mechanisms that contribute to differential forecasting accuracy. Biases in forecasting intensity were caused by changes in perceived event importance; biases in forecasting frequency of emotion were caused by changes in the frequency of thinking about the event. This is the first direct evidence mapping out strengths and weaknesses for different types of affective forecasts and the factors that contribute to this pattern.

This investigation examined predictors of changes over time in subjective well-being (SWB) after the 2016 United States presidential election. Two indicators of SWB—general happiness and life satisfaction—were assessed three weeks before the election, the week of the election, three weeks later, and six months later. Partisanship predicted both indicators of SWB, with Trump supporters experiencing improved SWB after the election, Clinton supporters experiencing worsened SWB after the election, and those who viewed both candidates as bad also experiencing worsened SWB after the election. The impact of the election on SWB decreased over time, with all participants returning to baseline life satisfaction six months after the election. Trump supporters and those who viewed both candidates as bad for the country also returned to baseline general happiness six months after the election. Clinton supporters, in contrast, remained below baseline levels of general happiness six months after the election. Moral and political values, and exposure to media inconsistent with those values, predicted lasting change in subjective well-being. National events can affect how people perceive the overall quality of their lives and these effects are exacerbated when moral and political values are involved.

People rely on predicted and remembered emotion to guide important decisions. But how much can they trust their mental representations of emotion to be accurate, and how much do they trust them? In this investigation, participants (N = 957) reported their predicted, experienced, and remembered emotional response to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They also reported how accurate and vivid they perceived their predictions and memories to be, and the importance of the election. Participants remembered their emotional responses more accurately than they predicted them. But, strikingly, they perceived their predictions to be more accurate than their memories. This perception was explained by the greater importance and vividness of anticipated versus remembered experience. We also assessed whether individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory for personal and public events (N = 33) showed superior ability to predict or remember their emotional responses to events. They did not and, even for this group, predicting emotion was a more intense experience than remembering emotion. These findings reveal asymmetries in the phenomenological experience of predicting and remembering emotion. The vividness of predicted emotion serves as a powerful subjective signal of accuracy even when predictions turn out to be wrong.

The present investigation examined the potential benefits and costs of optimistic expectations about future events through the lens of Error Management Theory (EMT). Decades of evidence have shown that optimism about the likelihood of future events is pervasive and difficult to correct. From an EMT perspective, this perpetuation of inaccurate beliefs is possible because optimism offers benefits greater than the costs. The present investigation examined this possibility for controllable important life events with a known time at which they would occur.College students taking their first exam (n = 1,061) and medical students being matched with residency placements (n = 182) reported their expectations and emotions weeks before the event and their responses after they knew the outcome of the event. There was evidence that optimistic expectations predicted the quality of effort investment before an event occurred -students were more satisfied with their studying and medical students were more satisfied with their decision making, and both groups performed better when optimistic. Optimistic expectations also predicted less emotional distress before the event occurred. There was no evidence that optimistic expectations related to longer-term greater distress when participants experienced an unexpected negative outcome; the valence of the outcome itself predicted distress. Consistent with EMT, optimistic expectations appear to have benefits for effort and emotion before an event occurs, with little cost after the outcome occurs.

People who are religious report more effective coping with negative events and greater satisfaction with life. These emotion judgments may reflect how religious people actually feel in the wake of negative events, or they may be aspirational and self-enhancing, reflecting how religious people hope or expect to feel as a member of their faith. To test this, in two studies, undergraduates reported their forecast and experienced emotional response to receiving an exam grade that was lower than expected. They also reported their satisfaction with life. In Study 2, we varied whether religious identity was primed before participants reported their emotional experience, and assessed self-enhancement. More religious participants forecast that they would feel happier about receiving a lower exam grade than expected, but did not actually experience greater happiness, even when their religious identity was primed. More religious participants also reported greater satisfaction with life, and this association was fully mediated by self-enhancement. These findings suggest that reports of effective coping and life satisfaction among religious people stem partly from aspirational expectations about how they will or should feel, rather than from how they actually do feel, following negative events.