Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz report in their book “The good Life” about the extremely exciting and more than 80-year-long longitudinal study of Harvard Medical School. And they also explain to us that we often get it quite wrong when predicting our own emotions. The keyword is: Affective Forecasting.
“Many researches now indicate that humans are very bad at affective forecasting. And not just in terms of short-term situations like the train ride, but also in the long run. We seem to be particularly bad at predicting the positive effects of relationships. This is largely due to the obvious fact that relationships can be chaotic and unpredictable. This chaos is one of the reasons why many people prefer to stay alone. They don’t necessarily long for loneliness – they just avoid the potential chaos that relationships generally bring with them. However, we overestimate this chaos, while we underestimate the positive effects of human connection. This characteristic often shows up when we make decisions: We pay a lot of attention to potential risks, while we lose sight of potential benefits.”
– Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz in their book “The good life – and how it can succeed – Insights from the world’s longest study on a fulfilled life”, page 57, Kösel Verlag, Munich 2023
