Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.
Emotion. 2013 Dec;13(6):1023-9. doi: 10.1037/a0033797. Epub 2013 Aug 5.
Affective forecasters often exhibit an impact bias, overestimating the intensity and duration of their emotional reaction to future events. Researchers have long wondered whether the impact bias might confer some benefit. We suggest that affective forecasters may strategically overestimate the hedonic impact of events to motivate their production. We report the results of four experiments providing the first support for this hypothesis. The impact bias was greater for forecasters who had chosen which of two events to attempt to produce than for forecasters who had yet to choose (Experiment 1). The impact bias was greater when forecasts were made while forecasters could (or perceived they could) influence whether an event was produced than when its production had been determined but was unknown (Experiments 2A and 2B). Finally, experimentally manipulating the extremity of affective forecasts for an event influenced the amount of effort that forecasters expended to produce it (Experiment 3). The results suggest that the impact bias may not be solely cognitive in origin, but may also have motivated underpinnings.
情感预测者通常表现出影响偏差，高估他们对未来事件的情绪反应的强度和持续时间。研究人员长期以来一直想知道这种影响偏差是否可能带来一些好处。我们认为，情感预测者可能会战略性地高估事件的享乐影响，以激励他们的产生。我们报告了四项实验的结果，首次为这一假设提供了支持。与尚未选择的预测者相比，选择尝试产生两个事件中的哪一个的预测者的影响偏差更大（实验 1）。当预测是在预测者可以（或认为他们可以）影响事件是否产生时做出的，而不是在事件的产生已经确定但未知时做出的（实验 2A 和 2B），影响偏差更大。最后，实验性地操纵事件的情感预测的极端性会影响预测者产生它的努力程度（实验 3）。结果表明，影响偏差的产生可能不仅源于认知，还可能具有激励的基础。
