What to Do on Spring Break?

Abstract

When individuals choose future activities on the basis of their past experiences, what guides those choices? The present study compared students' predicted, on-line, and remembered spring-break experiences, as well as the influence of these factors on students' desire to take a similar vacation in the future. Predicted and remembered experiences were both more positive-and, paradoxically, more negative-than on-line experiences. Of key importance, path analyses revealed that remembered experience, but neither on-line nor anticipated experience, directly predicted the desire to repeat the experience. These results suggest that although on-line measures may be superior to retrospective measures for approximating objective experience, retrospective measures may be superior for predicting choice.

Forgetting feelings: Opposite biases in reports of the intensity of past emotion and mood.

“…Moreover, they underestimate the intensity of past emotion but overestimate the intensity of past mood. These biases have important implications for decisionmaking because remembered feelings help people prepare for the future and make decisions about whether to repeat or avoid experiences (Wirtz et al, 2003). Underestimating the intensity of their emotional responses to past events leaves people unprepared and ill-equipped to cope with future events that evoke powerful feelings and behavioral impulses (Lench, Safer, & Levine, 2011;Loewenstein, 1996).…”

“…The present study examined whether the magnitude and direction of bias depend on the type of feeling being remembered: emotion or mood. Memory for emotion and mood directly affect a number of important psychological outcomes such as choices to repeat or avoid an experience (Wirtz, Kruger, Napa Scollon, & Diener, 2003), self-concept formation , and clinical assessments (Safer & Keuler, 2002), so it is vital to understand the degree and direction of bias when remembering past feelings.…”

“…We hypothesized that reports of the intensity of past mood would be relatively inaccurate and biased toward overestimating intensity. This hypothesis was based on findings people tend to focus on central features of an experience when remembering events and their responses to them (e.g., Levine & Edelstein, 2009;Morewedge et al, 2005;Wirtz et al, 2003). Moods, such as being generally cheerful or glum, are not directed toward a specific event and may be impacted by a number of mundane and easily forgotten events that occur during a given day or time period.…”

“…When people experience an emotional response to an event, their attention often narrows to salient, central features of the event (Compton, 2003). People also tend to rely on salient, central features of past events when remembering their past emotional reaction (Levine & Edelstein, 2008;Wirtz et al, 2003). In contrast, moods are less tied to specific, salient events that are easy to remember and may be influenced by a number of amorphous experiences during a given day or time period (Beedie et al, 2005).…”

The association between experiential and material expenditures and subjective well-being: New evidence from Hungarian survey data

“…It is probable that most individuals were not prepared to answer a question about how happy a new flat-screen television made them. There is evidence that thinking about happiness caused by past events results in an overestimation (due to focalism) of the actual feelings occurred during these events (Mitchell, Thompson, Peterson, & Cronk, 1997;Wilson, Meyers, & Gilbert, 2003;Wirtz, Kruger, Scollon, & Diener, 2003). Therefore, assessing happiness using a direct question may have led to superficial and less reliable answers.…”