Highly accurate prediction of emotions surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001 over 1-, 2-, and 7-year prediction intervals.

Abstract

In the aftermath of a national tragedy, important decisions are predicated on judgments of the emotional significance of the tragedy in the present and future. Research in affective forecasting has largely focused on ways in which people fail to make accurate predictions about the nature and duration of feelings experienced in the aftermath of an event. Here we ask a related but understudied question: can people forecast how they will feel in the future about a tragic event that has already occurred? We found that people were strikingly accurate when predicting how they would feel about the September 11 attacks over 1-, 2-, and 7-year prediction intervals. Although people slightly under- or overestimated their future feelings at times, they nonetheless showed high accuracy in forecasting 1) the overall intensity of their future negative emotion, and 2) the relative degree of different types of negative emotion (i.e., sadness, fear, or anger). Using a path model, we found that the relationship between forecasted and actual future emotion was partially mediated by current emotion and remembered emotion. These results extend theories of affective forecasting by showing that emotional responses to an event of ongoing national significance can be predicted with high accuracy, and by identifying current and remembered feelings as independent sources of this accuracy.

You shall go forth with joy: Religion and aspirational judgments about emotion.

“…In both studies, across participants, moderately high correlations were found between forecast and experienced emotional intensity ( r = .71 in Study 1 and .67 in Study 2). This finding is consistent with recent research showing that the magnitude of forecasting bias depends on the feature of emotion being forecast, and that people are fairly accurate when forecasting the intensity of their future emotional experience (Doré et al, 2016; Lench et al, 2019; Levine et al, 2012). Despite being fairly accurate, participants in Study 1 overestimated the emotional impact of receiving a lower than expected grade or an expected grade, consistent with a large body of research showing an impact bias in affective forecasting (Gilbert et al, 2002; Wilson & Gilbert, 2003).…”

Bias in predicted and remembered emotion

“…Undergraduates showed high accuracy when predicting the intensity of their feelings about receiving a better or worse exam grade than expected, but overestimated when asked to predict and later report their feelings in general [30]. Dore and colleagues [12] also document accuracy in predicting emotional intensity. They asked people to predict the intensity of emotion they would feel about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks 1, 2, or 7 years in the future.…”

“…Recent findings show that our mental GPS is not that bad. People often show striking accuracy when predicting the intensity of their feelings [12,29,30]. Predictions diverge most from experience when they encompass emotion duration or mood.…”

“…People do not always overestimate in predicting and remembering emotion, however. Recent research reveals underestimation [26][27][28], and accuracy [12,29,30], as well as overestimation [31][32][33]. To account for this variation, Buechel, Zhang, and Morewedge [26] proposed that emotional experiences are more attention absorbing and richly detailed than forecasts.…”

“…Failing to consider mundane events that will also occupy their attention in the future leads people to overestimate their overall emotional experience [11]. To predict emotion, people also rely on memories of how they felt in similar circumstances in the past [12]. The most accessible memories often concern experiences that were particularly emotionally intense [13].…”