What Is Affective Forecasting?

Affective forecasting is the prediction of future moods and responses to theoretical situations and events. It plays a role in decision making for everything from investing to medical treatment. Researchers study affective forecasting to learn more about how people perceive and predict their own emotions, and to explore its role in the process of evaluating choices and situations. Of particular interest in this field is the study of biases that intersect with predictions about emotional states.

Generally, people tend to overestimate impacts of events and situations, which can lead to biased decision making. For instance, when a doctor tells a patient that a surgical treatment is available for a condition, the patient might decline the surgery out of worries about the recovery period. Patients may predict that they will feel uncomfortable and unhappy after the procedure, and thus continue with the current mode of treatment even if the surgery would be more effective and appropriate. The prediction overestimates the intensity of pain, depression, and other emotions after the surgery.

A phenomenon known as the empathy gap can also play a role in affective forecasting. Someone who is bitterly unhappy may not be able to imagine being happy in the future; a suicidal patient, for instance, has difficulty thinking of anything to live for because it is impossible to think about being happy again, even if the patient remembers feeling happy at some point in life. The empathy gap can also work in reverse, where someone who is happy has a difficult time thinking of being unhappy as a result of a decision, and thus makes a poor choice.

Prediction of future emotional states can be important for people like investors, who may take or avoid decisions on the basis of beliefs about future happiness. Some investors are more willing to take risks, while others can develop a risk-averse strategy rooted in affective forecasting and concerns about feeling unhappy if a decision goes bad. While some risk-aversion can be strategically sound, it can turn into a fear so intense that the investor fails to make good decisions because of worry.

Surveys on affective forecasting seem to suggest that people tend to overestimate and exaggerate their predictions. This can create a feedback mechanism in some cases, where patients expect to respond in a particular way and thus increase the chances of experiencing that emotion. Understanding the role of affective forecasting in decision making can help people make more balanced and appropriate decisions, as they can compensate for their emotional predictions.