Affective prediction, what is it?

Affective prediction is also known as hedonic prediction or hedonic prediction mechanism. Consists in The ability of the human being to predict an emotional state in the future. However, preferences, decisions and behaviors influence this prediction process.

Today, Affective predictions are studied by psychologists and economists, as well as they have gained ground in research on medical care, law and happiness. Similarly, it has been investigated how affective predictions They can have an effect on decision making and well -being, which is of interest to analytics from different fields and politicians.

Origin of affective prediction

Affective prediction is classified as a process of emotional underestimation that takes place before an event. It is associated with high expectations and subsequent socio -emotional cost.

Human beings have the innate capacity of have expectations and consider illusions for the future. Bliss Prediction need is related to desire or longing to confirm that the events will bring well -being; That is why it is positively forecast, what will be the affective states that will accompany such events.

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who has investigated the psychology of judgment, decision making and the behavior economy, worked on the concept of hedonic forecasts at the beginning of the nineties, analyzing the impact it has on decision making.

However, the term of 'affective prognosis' was subsequently coined by psychologists Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert. In their first investigations they focused on measuring emotional forecasts, but then examined the precision of forecasts, revealing that People, surprisingly, are quite poor judges of their future emotional states.

An example of this is that, by predicting how the event of winning the lottery could affect happiness, most likely people overesting future positive feelings, ignoring other emotional factors.

The Forer effect, when we believe what we want to believe

Wilson and Gilbert designed a conceptual scheme called Affective Forecasting, in which they explain that The projection of emotional states for the future, for the sake of increasing well -being, influence preferences and behaviors. This scheme also reflects how events are predicted and are provided with an overvalued significance in emotional intensity and duration, which generates expectations that do not then coincide in real affective experience, When the event has happened.

In addition to this, Wilson and Gilbert examined the variables that influence affective prediction. One of these biases comes from Single influence correction before the announced event. That is At the time of predicting the difficulties that will be part of the real experience they are minimized, or even the possible difficulties that could influence said experience are subtracted.

This can be associated with the notion of Cognitive avoidance, understood as a variable that restricts the elements that cause uncertainty. In the Wilson and Gilbert model it is considered that people have a Psychological immune system, which allows resignify facts and find a meaning to what is lived, which is related to resilience.

Elements of affective prediction

In affective prediction some elements can be presented, such as:

• Affective Valencia: or the value of emotion. This is the ability to know if an event will report positive or negative emotions.
• Specific emotions: or the ability to determine what circumstances will generate happiness and which will cause feelings of fear, anguish, insecurity or anxiety.
• Intensity and duration of emotions: Regarding the prediction of intensity and duration, human beings do not always manage to make a good assessment.

As for the processes of the senses, the important events in life can have a remarkable impact on people's emotions for a long time, but intensity tends to decrease, or what is known as Emotional Evanescence. This is because human beings have psychological processes that allow them Mush an emotion. Unexpected, unlikely or surprising events often generate an emotional reaction of greater intensity.

Usually people do not feel comfortable with chaos, which is why they automatically think about how to make sense of an event. This is related to the immune negligence, That is, when unwanted acts happen, we are angry and try to find meaning to face what happens. However, it is not usually anticipated what will make sense of events so that they decrease the intensity. This is known as Planning negligence. An example of this is when an employee thinks: "I will be happy if I boss give me a rise", but when he gets it, although the employee gets excited, over time he acquires a sense of the situation that leads them to think: “I am Very dedicated, my boss should have noticed it ”and this cushions the emotional reaction.

There are many aspects that can lead to cognitive errors. Affective forecasts trust the memories they have about past events and, when informing them, they can omit details, Change facts that never happened or add things that never happened and this affects their predictive capacity, Well, impact bias increases. This is exemplified when baseball fans turn to the best game they can remember to make game forecasts that are about to see.

What are cognitive biases and what are the main

Bibliography

• Taylor s. AND., And Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and Well-Being: a Psychological Social Perspective on Mental Health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
• Wilson, t., and Gilbert, G. (2003). APFFECTIVE FORECASTING. In l. Berkowitz and m. P. ZANNA (EDS). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology(pp. 345-412). Chicago: Academic Press.
• Wilson, t. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2005). APFFECTIVE FORECASTING KNOWING WHAT TO WANT. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14 (3), 131-134.
• Image: Photo by Andrea Piacquadio in Pexels