Biased Affective Forecasting: A Potential Mechanism That Enhances Resilience and Well-Being.

Desirée Colombo,Azucena García-Palacios,Giuseppe Riva,Javier Fernández-Álvarez,Carlos Suso-Ribera,Pietro Cipresso,Cristina Botella

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01333

Abstract

According to a growing body of studies, people’s ability to forecast future emotional experiences is generally biased. Nonetheless, the existing literature has mainly explored affective forecasting in relation to specific events, whereas little is still known about the ability to make general estimations of future emotional states. Based on existing evidence suggesting future-oriented disposition as a key factor for mental health, the aims of the current study were (1) to investigate the relationship between negative (NA) and positive (PA) affective forecasting biases and perceived psychological well-being, and (2) to explore whether positively biased predictions are associated with resilience and foster one’s skills to cope with stressful events. To do so, we asked 85 undergraduate students to forecast PA and NA over 2 weeks, as well as to report their daily affect through a web-based Ecological Momentary Assessment. According to the results, positively biased PA forecasting (i.e., overestimating positive emotional states) was associated with greater perceived psychological well-being and higher resilience. When high levels of stress were experienced, participants holding an optimistic, yet biased, estimation of future PA were more likely to successfully manage stressors, thus maintaining lower levels of NA and higher levels of positive emotions. We suggest that positively biased PA forecasting is an adaptive cognitive distortion that boosts people’s resilience and mental health, thus opening new avenues for the promotion of psychological well-being.

Highlights

As terms draws to a close and summer vacations stretch out ahead, people start to mentally imagine the upcoming holidays
Instead, we investigated affective forecasting as a future-oriented disposition, asking participants to estimate their affect during a 2-week period
The main aim of the present study was to explore whether biased affective forecasting was associated with perceived psychological well-being, consistently with the hypothesis that the ability to estimate future emotional experiences constitutes a future-oriented strategy to regulate emotions (Goodhart, 1985; Totterdell et al, 1997)

Summary

Introduction

As terms draws to a close and summer vacations stretch out ahead, people start to mentally imagine the upcoming holidays. They visualize themselves sleeping until late, having a brunch with some friends or leaving for a tropical destination. As evidenced by a long tradition of research, people are Biased Affective Forecasting used to mentally time travel, and they always try to imagine and predict future emotional experiences (Kahneman and Snell, 1990; Gilbert et al, 2002; Gilbert and Wilson, 2009). The literature has shown that, while people are usually quite accurate at forecasting the valence of future emotional experiences (i.e., negative or positive) or the specific emotions they will experience (e.g., anger or fear) (Wilson and Gilbert, 2003), they are quite biased at estimating emotional intensity and duration, leading to the so-called durability bias (i.e., the tendency to overestimate the duration of an emotional reaction) (Gilbert et al, 1998) and impact bias (i.e., the tendency to overestimate the impact of a future event) (Gilbert et al, 2002; Wilson et al, 2003)

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