Age differences in affective forecasting accuracy.

Abstract

Affective forecasts are people's predictions of their future feelings in response to future events. In this study, we examined whether younger and older adults differ in their affective forecasting accuracy. To do so, we recruited younger and older American voters and asked them to predict how they would feel following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In the general feelings condition, participants predicted how they would feel, in general, following an election victory or loss. In the event-related feelings condition, participants predicted their future feelings specifically about an election victory and about an election loss. Later, these same participants reported their experienced feelings (either in general or about the election outcome). In the general feelings condition, age differences in affective forecasting accuracy varied as a function of whether participants' preferred candidate won or lost the election. Among election victors, there were age-related improvements in affective forecasting accuracy of negative feelings. In contrast, among election losers there were age-related declines in affective forecasting accuracy of both negative and positive feelings. A different pattern emerged for participants in the event-related feelings condition. These participants were highly accurate in their affective forecasts, and there were minimal age differences in forecasting accuracy. Together, these results show that age differences in affective forecasting accuracy depend upon both the type of future event, and the type of future feeling being predicted. When considered together, these results also suggest that the focusing illusion plays a key role in modulating age differences in affective forecasting accuracy. Public Significance StatementWe examined whether younger and older adults differ in their ability to accurately predict their future feelings. We found that both younger and older people were extremely accurate when predicting their future feelings about a specific event and there were minimal age differences. However, there were relatively large age differences in how accurately people could predict their future feelings "in general." When people imagined how they would generally feel after a future positive event (i.e., an election win), there were age-related improvements in the accuracy of their predictions, but when people imagined how they would generally feel after a future negative event (i.e., an election loss), there were age-related declines in the accuracy of their predictions.

Does subjective socioeconomic status moderate the effect of basic psychological need satisfaction on undergraduates' affective forecasting?

“…A large number of studies have found that people are not capable of successfully predicting the duration and intensity of their emotional response to future events (Gilbert et al, 2004;Brown and McConnell, 2011;Morewedge and Buechel, 2013;Mata et al, 2018;Barber et al, 2023). People frequently overestimate how happy they will be after positive events and how sad they will feel after negative ones, which has been named the impact bias (Wilson et al, 2000;Wilson and Gilbert, 2003).…”

“…Previous research found some factors influencing affective forecasting, such as focusing illusion, i.e., people focus too much on the occurrence of the focal event and fail to consider the consequences of other events that are likely to occur (Wilson et al, 2000;Wilson and Gilbert, 2005;Lench et al, 2011), immune neglect, i.e., the tendency to overlook coping strategies and other aspects of the "psychological immune system" that can reduce future distress (Gilbert et al, 1998;Diener et al, 2006), aging (Barber et al, 2023), and motivation (Morewedge and Buechel, 2013;Pauketat et al, 2016;Geng and Jiang, 2017;Geng et al, 2018). However, based on our knowledge, few studies shed light on the influence of basic psychological needs (BPNS) on affective forecasting.…”