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One of the most amazing things about the human mind is its ability to imagine events that haven’t happened yet. To make a decision about something new – trying a new dish, picking a show to watch, and choosing a career – you have to mentally construct the experience and then predict how pleasant or unpleasant it will be.
But this simulation, say psychologists, is often distorted. Our predictions tend to exaggerate how happy or sad we’ll feel, and for how long.
“No doubt good things make us happy and bad things make us sad,” says Tim Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia. “But as a rule, not as long as we think they will.”