THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYsuffering from end-stage renal disease showed their mood was just as
positive as the mood among a group of healthy people.
Research is beginning to provide clues as to why we are so poor at
predicting how we’ll feel. One common mistake, it seems, is that we
tend to imagine the worst or best possible scenario to help us predict
our reaction to future situations. Carey Morewedge and colleagues
showed this by approaching people at a railway station and asking them
to recall a time their train had been delayed and how this made them
feel. A twist was that half the participants were asked to recall any time
this had happened whereas the other half were asked to recall the worst
ever occasion. Despite these contrasting instructions, the participants
asked to recall any occasion remembered a past travel nightmare that
was just as negative as did the participants specifically instructed to
remember their worst ever train delay.
It is a similar story when it comes to imagining positive events. Foot-
ball fans asked to imagine any time that their team had won tended to
recall an occasion just as wonderful and euphoric as fans specifically
asked to remember their team’s best ever victory.
Another clue for why we’re so useless at predicting our future feelings
comes from a study by Dan Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness,
in which he asked a group of people to imagine how much they’d enjoy
eating crisps if they had first eaten either sardines or chocolate. These
participants tended to overestimate or underestimate, respectively,
their enjoyment of the crisps relative to a second group of participants
Waiting for the train. It’s not always as bad as you remember.