Dr. Laurie Santos: Our Minds Are Bad at Predicting Our Feelings. The Science of Well-Being for Teens

Summary

Dr. Laurie Santos explains why people often make choices based on inaccurate expectations about how happy or unhappy future events will make them. The lecture focuses on affective forecasting: predicting how we will feel in response to something that might happen.

People usually predict the emotional direction of an event correctly—for example, that a vacation will feel good or failing a test will feel bad. But they tend to overestimate both:

• Intensity: How good or bad the event will feel.
• Duration: How long those feelings will last.

This pattern is called the impact bias: we expect events to affect us more strongly and for longer than they actually do.

Evidence and examples

• Grades: Students predicted they would feel much happier than they actually did after receiving a better-than-expected grade, and more miserable than they actually did after receiving a worse-than-expected grade. The actual emotional differences were smaller than anticipated.
• Other positive events: Winning a large amount of money, receiving a new car, going on an exciting trip, or getting married may be enjoyable, but people often expect these events to bring more happiness than they do.
• Negative events: A breakup, a serious illness, or failing a driving test can be genuinely upsetting, but people often predict they will feel worse than they ultimately do.
• Repeated setbacks: In the driving-test example, teenagers continued to overpredict how miserable they would feel after failing, even after having failed before. Experience did not necessarily make their forecasts more accurate.

Main lesson

Our forecasts can mislead us when we decide what to pursue or fear. We may chase experiences or achievements expecting them to produce lasting, intense happiness, while dreading setbacks as if their effects will be overwhelming and permanent. In many cases, the eventual emotional impact is more moderate than we expect.

Speakers and sources featured

• Dr. Laurie Santos — lecturer and presenter.
• Levine and colleagues — researchers whose study on students’ grade predictions is discussed.
• “Hey and colleagues” — researchers named in the subtitles in connection with teenagers’ predictions about failing driving tests. The name may be imperfectly transcribed.