In the psychology of affective forecasting, the impact bias, a form of which is the durability bias, is the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of future emotional states.

Overview

People display an impact bias when they overestimate the intensity and durability of affect when making predictions about their emotional responses. It is a cognitive bias that has been found in populations ranging from college students (e.g. Dunn, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2003; Buehler & McFarland, 2001), to sports fans (Wilson et al, 2000), to registered voters (Gilbert et al, 1998).

Motivated Distortions: When faced with a negative event people may have forecasts that are overestimated and can evoke either comfort or fear in the present. The overestimation however can often be used to soften the effects of an event or make it easier by the reality not being as extreme as the forecasted impact.

Under correction (anchoring and adjustment): People anchor their prediction on how they currently feel and never accurately adjust their predictions. An illustrative example proposed by Wilson and Gilbert (2005), is that if you are currently in bed with a cold, and are invited to a party a month from now, it will be very difficult to separate your negative feelings from your prediction of how you will feel on a Saturday night a month later.

See also

  • List of cognitive biases
  • Hot-cold empathy gap
  • Hedonic treadmill
  • Projection bias
  • Affective Forecasting
  • Decision-making
  • Distinction bias
  • Focusing effects
  • Duration neglect

References

;Sources

  • Video of Gilbert discussing humans' failure to predict what makes us happy. Presented July 2005 at the TED Conference in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:02
  • Impact Bias course on www.RN.org