A study on newlyweds illustrates poor affective forecasting. Despite nearly all participants predicting their marital satisfaction would remain stable or improve over four years, their satisfaction levels actually declined during this period.

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Refers to how people predict their future emotional states and how these predictions influence their decisions and behavior.

Affective Forecasting

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Example of Affective Forecasting: Marital Satisfaction Predictions

People are often incorrect when estimating how positive or negative life events will change their long-term happiness. It is easy to imagine feeling permanently euphoric after events such as winning the lottery, being asked on a date by an attractive celebrity, or being offered a dream job, or to imagine feeling permanently miserable after a disabling accident or the end of a romantic relationship. For example, long-suffering fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, whose team had not won a World Series championship since 1908, thought they would feel permanently elated when the team finally won another World Series in 2016.

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