IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/xrs/sfbmaa/02-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Role of Lay Theories of Affect Progressions in Affective Forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • Igou, Eric

    (Sonderforschungsbereich 504)

Abstract

Numerous studies demonstrate that individuals are inaccurate in estimating the duration of affective states resulting from events, for instance after success or failure. This tendency often has an impact on decisions that fail to maximize experience utility (Kahneman & Snell, 1990). It is assumed that lay theories about the progression of affect over time influence the estimated duration of affective reactions to events. Specifically, a lay theory of affect reduction leads to a shorter estimated duration than a lay theory of affect continuity. Three studies demonstrate that such accessible lay theories have an impact on the estimated duration of affect when the theories were activated either directly (Study 1) or more subtly (Studies 2 and 3). In addition it can be shown that the impact of these theories are more pronounced under high elaboration conditions (Study 3). The conditions for the impact of lay theories of affect progressions and the implications for the inaccuracy of affective forecasts are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Igou, Eric, 2002. "The Role of Lay Theories of Affect Progressions in Affective Forecasting," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 02-39, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    • Handle: RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:02-39
    Note: This research was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the SFB 504, at the University of Mannheim. Correspondence should be addressed to Eric R. Igou, GF-Psychology Department, New School University, 65 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003, U.S.A., Email: IgouE@newschool.edu
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:xrs:sfbmaa:02-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Carsten Schmidt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfmande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.