HOW YOU SEE YOURSELFwith our idealistic self-concept. Oh and by the way, layered on top of
these distortions is our tendency to think that other people are more
prone to self-bias than we ourselves are – the so-called “bias blindspot”.
Affective forecasting
So far we’ve seen how little accurate knowledge we have about our
current selves and even our past selves. This self-ignorance also extends
into the future, as it appears we’re close to clueless when it comes to
anticipating our emotional reaction to future circumstances – a skill
psychologists call “affective forecasting”. Research in this area helps
explain why we gladly arrange to visit a cantankerous relative on the
other side of the country, and yet, as the meeting draws ever nearer, it
begins to loom darkly, more like a visit to the dentist than a pleasure trip.
We find ourselves soul-searching: “What was I thinking? Why, oh why,
did the me of 21 February think it would be a remotely sensible idea to
arrange for myself to hike across the country in the middle of summer
to see an aunt who I can’t stand?”
What answers does psychology have? First of all, research shows that we
overestimate the emotional impact of future events – a habit that helps
explain the irrational dread as the aunt visit looms. The London-based
psychologists Nick Sevdalis and Nigel Harvey investigated this tendency
by tricking participants into thinking they were playing a financial
game with a stranger in another room. Participants had to choose how
much of £10 to split with the stranger, knowing that if she turned down
their offer, then they’d end up with nothing. The participants also had
to predict how bad they’d feel if this happened. In reality, there was no
stranger and the researchers made it so that all 47 participants ended
up losing the £10. Crucially, the amount of disappointment participants
actually reported feeling afterwards was far less than they had predicted.
A follow-up experiment with students showed that they similarly over-
estimated how good an unexpectedly high coursework mark made them
feel. In other words, bad events don’t hurt as much as we think they will
and positive outcomes don’t feel nearly as good.
These examples may seem trivial, but other research has shown that
major life events like winning the lottery or developing a chronic illness
also have far less of an impact than we might imagine. For example,
people asked to imagine how they’ll feel after developing a chronic
illness say its impact will be devastating, yet research with patients