Affective Forecasting: Expectations and experiences are not the same

What is it about?

When people predict how satisfied or dissatisfied they will be with various public or private products or services, as well as other events that they will encounter in the future, they tend to exaggerate the degree of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) they will experience.

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Why is it important?

Public authories, as well as both public and private service suppliers, do not acknowledge that people often mispredict the future degree of satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) related to product and service consumption. They use people's predictions about future satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) for corporate decision making, even if people's preditions about future satisfaction are not valid predictors of their actual future satisfaction.