Who Can Predict Their Future Feelings? Individual Differences in Affective Forecasting Accuracy

Abstract

We examine whether the accuracy of people’s predictions about their future emotions is related to the ways they experience their emotions throughout daily life, including individual differences in emotional granularity, emotional complexity, emotional intelligence, and emodiversity. Participants predicted how they would feel while viewing a series of evocative pictures based on descriptions; 1 week later they rated their felt emotion while viewing the pictures. Participants also completed a 7-day experience sampling protocol in which they rated their current emotions throughout the day, and these data were used to derive individual difference measures. Results revealed less prediction error for those higher in emotional intelligence and negative emotional granularity (for negative emotions only), but greater error for those higher in emodiversity. Findings shed light on individual differences in affective forecasting accuracy, a skill that has important implications for people’s daily choices and well-being.