Now that the election is over, researchers who study emotions would like us to know one thing: Whatever comes next, it will almost certainly not be as bad (or as good) as we might think.
To understand why this is true, we need to know something about affective forecasting. Affective forecasting is a fancy term for predicting how we’ll feel in the future—and people are surprisingly bad at it. Here’s why.
First, we often focus too much on a single event or factor and fail to consider all the other influences in our lives that will affect how we feel in the future. We vividly imagine distressing news stories in the weeks and months ahead, but we fail to consider upcoming visits with friends and family, victories by our favorite teams, and the pleasures that come from reading a good book, eating a good meal, and listening to good music.
Second, we tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of our future emotions. We think a breakup will leave us feeling miserable for months, but it probably won’t. When our emotions swing very high or very low, the feeling rarely lasts for long. Like other biological systems, our brain seeks a state of balance or equilibrium, so it tamps down emotional extremes and brings us back to where we started, more or less.
Third, we often underestimate our own emotional resiliency and the efficiency of our psychological immune system. Most people are, in fact, incredibly good at finding silver linings and making the best of a bad situation. We can’t change what happened, but we can change how we feel about it.
In the closely contested 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, many people expected the Supreme Court’s decision (about who won) to strongly influence how happy (or sad) they would feel a day after the decision was announced. In fact, researchers observed that the Court’s ruling had a far smaller emotional impact than people had earlier predicted (Wilson, Meyers, & Gilbert, 2003).
For all these reasons, whatever comes next probably won’t be as bad as we might think. As the Brits like to say, stay calm and carry on.
