THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYwho really did get to eat either sardines or chocolate followed by crisps
(without first having to imagine what it would be like).
According to Gilbert, this is because the first group of participants
couldn’t help but compare the anticipated pleasure of the crisps against
the imagined experience of eating sardines or chocolate, whereas the
participants who simply did the eating enjoyed the crisps for what they
were, regardless of what they’d eaten first. Gilbert believes this is exactly
what we do in real life. When thinking about that visit to our aunt we
compare the anticipated experience unfavourably against the potential
joy of going to the football that weekend, or of going to the movies with
a friend or partner. The reality when it comes to a given scenario – be
that eating crisps or visiting the aunt – is that we’re usually so engrossed
in the moment that we just experience the situation for what it is, rather
than comparing it against other possibilities.
MAKING BETTER PREDICTIONS
Fortunately, there are things we can do to help improve our ability to
predict our future feelings. One tactic derives from the study discussed
earlier in which a group of rail passengers was asked to recall any delayed
journey and another group their worst delayed journey. Both remem-
bered equally dire experiences. Differences between the groups only
emerged when they were asked to predict how they’d feel if they were
delayed that day. In this case, the people previously asked to recall their
worst ever journey made far less dramatic predictions. It’s as if their
awareness that they had recalled an extreme example from their past
made them realize a delay that day probably wouldn’t be so bad. The
lesson, it seems, is that we may not be able to prevent ourselves from
invoking extreme memories, but recognizing that we do this could help
us form more realistic emotional forecasts.
There’s another simple way we can improve our emotional foresight
- ask a friend. In another study by Dan Gilbert, female undergraduates
were asked to predict how much they’d enjoy a five-minute speed date
with a man. They had one of two kinds of information available to help
them: a written profile of the man or a personal account from one of
their peers who had dated the same man. Before the date, but after their
prediction, the women got to see whichever information they’d so far
missed out on, just to keep things equal once the date took place. After
the date, the women rated how the experience actually went, and this
was compared to their earlier predictions. What transpired was that the