情感预测的影响偏差——聚焦错觉还是适应忽视?

The Impact Bias in Affective Forecasting: Focalism or Unforeseen Adaptation?

为了考察情感预测影响偏差中聚焦错觉和适应忽视的作用,本研究通过两个实验,先让大学生被试对考研(实验1a)、骨折手术(实验1b)、搬到新校区(实验2)进行情感预测,然后将其与情感体验进行比较,并比较了去焦点化训练、适应训练和控制组对影响偏差的干预效果。结果发现:去焦点化训练显著地降低了情感预测的影响偏差,而适应训练和控制组则没有显著降低影响偏差。因此,本研究认为,当情境线索清楚的时候,聚焦错觉是导致情感预测影响偏差的主要原因。

Over the last two decades, a substantial body of research has uncovered the impact bias, which reflects the tendency for people to overestimate the initial impact and/or the duration of an emotional event （Gilbert, et al., 1998; Wilson et al., 2000; Levine et al., 2012; Wirtz et al., 2003）. Why do we make these errors in affective forecasts？ One reason is focalism, the other is unforeseen adaptation. However, the boundary conditions of fucalism and unforeseen adaptation have been poorly understood. Therefore, it is necessary to study when the focalism is more important for the impact bias. Two experiments were conducted. With between-subjects design, all participants were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions, that is, defocusing exercise, adaptation exercise, and control condition. Then, they were asked to predict the affect after different events （being admitted to graduate in Ela, taking fracture surgery in Elb, and moving to new campus in E2）. The effects of three interventions （defucusing exercise, adaptation exercise, control condition） on impact bias were compared. In Experiment 1, the predicted affect and actual affect after the event were compared by t - test; results showed that under the condition of defocusing exercise there was no significant difference between the predicted affect and actual affect（E1a： t=.94, p〉.05; E1b： t=-1.67, p〉.05）, which means that there was no impact bias. However, under the condition of adaptation exercise （E1a： t=2.24, p〈.05; Elb： t=-2.82, p〈.01） and control condition（ E1 a： t=-2.50, p〈.05; E 1b： t=-3.11, p〈.01）, the predicted affect was overestimated, which means there was an impact bias. In Experiment 2, first in the participant level, the actual affect was regressed on the predicted affect over six time points, in which the regression coefficient 13 reflected the accuracy of affect forecasts. Then, the regression coefficients of three conditions （defocus exercise, adaption exercise, and control condition） were compared by ANOVA. Results showed that the defocusing exercise improved the accuracy of affective forecast significantly; however, participants in the adaptation exercise and control condition still overestimated the actual affect after future events, F（2,151） =2.99, p〈.05. Therefore, in the present study, the fucalism was the main source of the impact bias. Because the affective tasks of the present study provided clear situational clues, it concludes that when the situational clue is clear, focalism is the main source of impact bias. The present study has important theoretical contributions in that it clarified the boundary condition of the role of focalism and unforeseen adaptation in the impact bias from the viewpoint of information processing. The present study is also important to reduce the impact bias, for example, when the situational clue is clear, the impact bias can be reduced significantly by a defocusing exercise.