Affective Forecasting in Everyday Life: Accuracy and Associations with Emotional Benefits

Abstract

Affective forecasting—how people think they will feel in the future—is theorized to benefit well-being, but there is scarce evidence for this link. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether (1) people can accurately forecast their affect for the next day and week, and (2) whether accurate forecasts benefit well-being. Participants (N = 209) completed 7 days of experience sampling. Each evening, participants forecasted how they would feel tomorrow. The following day, participants rated experienced affect, as well as emotion-focused coping and daily life satisfaction. Participants showed relative accuracy—when they forecasted experiencing higher affect levels than usual, they experienced higher affect—with evidence of slight overestimation depending on how accuracy was operationalized. However, forecasting accuracy did not predict coping or life satisfaction. These findings were consistent across affect valence and using multilevel regression and response surface analyses, calling into question theorized links between affective forecasting and well-being.

Ethical Considerations and Checklist for Affective Research With Wearables

“…We believe that participants should be compensated for the time devoted to the study. Paying participants with specific compensation structures corresponding to the level of involvement in the study is a well-known strategy in research using Experience Sampling Methods [54], [55].…”