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5 Wouldn't It Be Nice? Predicting Future Feelings Geor;ge Loewenstein and David Schkade The mechanics ofhedonics (that is, what makes people happy) are only halfthe picture; the other half is the question ofwhether people are aware ofthese mechanics and can apply them to their own lives. All decisions involve predictions offuture tastes or feelings . The quality ofthe decision depends critically on the accuracy of these predictions. While the majority ofpredictions offeelings are probably reasonably accurate , there appear to be many situations in which people make systematic prediction errors. This chapter focuses on when and why such errors occur. Measuring the accuracy ofpredictions offeelings requires contrasting people's predictions of how they will feel in a certain situation with the feelings they ultimately do experience in that situation. This structure poses significant methodological challenges for researchers, because of both the difficulty of measuring feelings and the intertemporal character of the phenomenon. Studies ofpredictions oftastes and feelings have appeared in several widely scattered literatures and have addressed a great variety of topics. The different examples of mispredictions of tastes and feelings in our review point to at least three different , but interrelated, mechanisms as major sources oferrors in predicting feelings: 1. People often hold incorrect intuitive theories about the determinants of happiness, which in turn lead to errors when predictions are based on them. 2. Different considerations may be salient when predicting future feelings than those that actually influence experienced feelings. 3. When in a «coldD state people often have diffiwlty imagining how they wOllld feel or what they might do ifthey were in a «hot" state-for example , angry, hungry, in pain, or sexually excited. It may also be the case that, when in a hot state, people frequently have difficulty imagining that they will inevitably cool offeventually. Such ((hot/ cold empathy gaps" can lead to errors in predicting both feelings and behavior. Learning from experience does not seem to offer a broad cure for prediction errors because intuitive theories are often resistant to change, memories of experience are often themselves biased or incomplete, and experiences rarely repeat themselves often enough to make diagnostic patterns noticeable. IN THE BEACH BOYS song "Wouldn't It Be Nice," an adolescent laments parental oppression, which stands in the way of the anticipated bliss of marriage to his sweetheart. If his wishes came true, would he be as happy as he believes? Or do his parents know something about his future preferences that he doesn't? George Bernard Shaw might have sided with the parents, noting as he did that "there are two tragedies in life. One is to lose our heart's desire. The other is to gain it." The book in which this chapter appears is mostly about the mechanics of hedonics-what makes people happy. But this is only half the picture; the other half is whether people are aware of these mechanics and can apply them to their own lives. As March (1978) noted in a seminal article, all decisions involve predictions of future tastes or feelings . Getting married involves a prediction of one's long-term feelings toward one's spouse; returning to school for an advanced degree involves predictions about how it will feel to be a student as well as predictions of long-term career preferences ; buying a car involves a prediction of how it would feel to drive around in different cars. In each of these examples, the quality of the decision depends critically on the accuracy of the prediction ; errors in predicting feelings are measured in units of divorce, dropout, career burnout, and consumer dissatisfaction. The accuracy of people's predictions of their own feelings is important not only for individual well-being but also, increasingly, for public policy.l Recent decades have seen an expansion of attempts to base public policies on measurements of public values. The best known of these efforts is Oregon's experiment in health-care rationing, but attempts to base public policy on public values 86 Well-Being have been made in many other areas as well, such as transportation safety and environmental policy.2 Measurement of public values typically involves surveys in which respondents are asked to predict how they would feel if they were in health conditions or environmental states different from the ones they are in. The meaningfulness of the measured values, and the optimality of the policies based on them, therefore depend in part on the accuracy of predictions of feelings. Undoubtedly, the great majority...

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