Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection.

Boven, Leaf Van; Ashworth, Laurence

doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.289

Cited by 211 publications

(193 citation statements)

References 55 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…At the time of recall, people tend to be in a cold state and have difficulty imagining the visceral discomfort they experienced while in a hot state. However, the dread associated with an anticipated return to the aversive experience may reinstate the hot state, consistent with prior findings that people experience more intense emotions during anticipation rather than retrospection (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007). This re-activation of the hot state would then make it easier to vividly remember how painful the experience truly was.…”

Section: When Expected Repetition Makes the Past Seem Worsesupporting

confidence: 68%

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

Galak¹,

Meyvis²

2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Across 7 laboratory studies and 1 field study, we demonstrated that people remembered an unpleasant experience as more aversive when they expected this experience to return than when they had no such expectation. Our results indicate that this effect results from people's tendency to brace for unpleasant experiences. Specifically, when faced with the anticipated return of the experience, people prepare for the worst, leading them to remember the initial experience as more aversive. This bracing can be reduced either by limiting people's self-regulatory resources or by denying them the time to brace. These results indicate that people's tendency to remember aversive experiences as less unpleasant than they actually were (as demonstrated in prior research) does not necessarily imply that people are willing to re-engage in these experiences—because the anticipation of repeating the experience may counteract the initial memory bias.

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Section: When Expected Repetition Makes the Past Seem Worsesupporting

confidence: 68%

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

Galak¹,

Meyvis²

2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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“…Future research might follow up on this self-serving aspect more directly by examining people's emotions (and the beliefs about those emotions) at the time they experience them using, for example, methods of experience sampling (Scollon et al 2003) or day reconstruction (Kahneman et al 2004). Such methods may shed light on whether emotion appraisals are immediately skewed to the positive or become progressively more positive with the passage of time (Mitchell et al 1997;Van Boven and Ashworth 2007).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

2008

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What do people think about the emotion of regret? Recent demonstrations of the psychological benefits of regret have been framed against an assumption that most people find regret to be aversive, both when experienced but also when recalled later. Two studies explored lay evaluations of regret experiences, revealing them to be largely favorable rather than unfavorable. Study 1 demonstrated that regret, but not other negative emotions, was dominated by positive more than negative evaluations. In both studies 1 and 2, although participants saw a great deal of benefit from their negative emotions, regret stood out as particularly beneficial. Indeed, in study 2, regret was seen to be the most beneficial of 12 negative emotions on all five functions of: making sense of past experiences, facilitating approach behaviors, facilitating avoidance behaviors, gaining insights into the self, and in preserving social harmony. Moreover, in study 2, individuals made self-serving ascriptions of regret, reporting greater regret experiences for themselves than for others. In short, people value their regrets substantially more than they do other negative emotions. KeywordsRegret; Counterfactual; Affect; Emotion At first glance, it would seem uncontroversial to make the claim "regret is bad." After all, regret is a negative emotion hinging on the recognition that a personal action could have made the past better (Landman 1993;Zeelenberg 1999). Regret typically implies self-blame for unfortunate events (Connolly and Zeelenberg 2002). Individuals who ruminate on their regrets are more likely to report reduced life satisfaction and to experience difficulty coping with negative life events (e.g., Lecci et al. 1994;Schwartz et al. 2002). Regret is additionally problematic because of its biasing effect on decision-making, an idea central to regret theories in economics (e.g., Bell 1982; Connolly and Butler 2006). At a more basic level, regret (like any negative emotion) is intrinsically aversive, hence individuals are motivated to avoid it, even if this means sacrificing an objectively superior reward (Zeelenberg et al. 1996).Although early depictions of regret emphasized various dysfunctional aspects, newer conceptions additionally have emphasized its functional basis, particularly in terms of triggering behavior change aimed at remediation (Landman 1993;Roese and Summerville Correspondence to: Neal J. Roese. Markman et al. 2008;Roese 1994Roese , 1997. Counterfactual inference, by identifying a cause of a problem, helps make sense of negative experience. For example, a student thinking "If only I had studied harder" may on subsequent exams study harder and hence perform better. Counterfactual thinking may be useful both for approach behaviors (e.g., studying harder) as well as avoidance behaviors (e.g., staying away from parties the night before an exam). Further, in seeing causal connections between past actions and outcomes, counterfactual thinking and hence regret may help people to place events into context, thereby making ...

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“…For instance, people tend to experience stronger emotions, both positive and negative, when anticipating events than when recalling them (Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007). The emotional impact of past events is blunted by the passage of time and what may once have been strong emotions fade to merely average ones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps the most basic bias introduced by this reconstruction process is that one's immediate online evaluation of a stimulus is likely to be imperfectly correlated with one's more distant recall of an experience (Johnson & Sherman, 1990;Van Boven & Ashworth, 2007). Whenever two variables are imperfectly correlated, extreme scores on one variable tend to be matched by less extreme scores on the other variable (Galton, 1886).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When the best appears to be saved for last: Serial position effects on choice

Epley

2009

Behavioral Decision Making

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Decision-makers often evaluate options sequentially due to constraints on attention, timing, or physical location of the options. Choosing the best option will therefore often depend on people's memories of the options. Because imperfect recall introduces uncertainty in earlier options, judgments of those options should regress toward the category mean as memory decays over time. Relatively desirable options will therefore tend to seem less desirable with time, and relatively undesirable options will tend to seem less undesirable with time. We therefore predicted that people will tend to select the first option in a set when choosing between generally undesirable options, and will tend to select the last when choosing between generally desirable options. We demonstrate these serial position effects in choices among paintings, American Idol audition clips, jellybeans, and female faces, provide evidence of its underlying mechanism, and explain how these findings build on existing accounts.

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Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection.

Cited by 211 publications

References 55 publications

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

The pain was greater if it will happen again: The effect of anticipated continuation on retrospective discomfort.

Praise for regret: People value regret above other negative emotions

When the best appears to be saved for last: Serial position effects on choice

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