Impact Bias
We overestimate the emotional impact of future events on our well-being.
The impact bias is the tendency to overestimate the emotional impact of a future event, in terms of intensity or duration. People expect to be far more happy after winning the lottery, or far more miserable after a divorce, than they actually turn out to be. Studies by Dan Gilbert show that both positive and negative events lose their emotional impact much faster than people predict, due to our psychological immune system.
What it looks like in the wild.
- Everyday life Job Promotion Expectations People predict a promotion will make them much happier; studies show happiness from promotions fades rapidly as the new baseline sets in.
Recognising a definition is not the same skill as spotting it.
Two scenarios from the app, with distractors drawn from the same family of biases — which is what makes them hard.
Quinn avoids making a will, believing that the process of confronting her own mortality will cause such severe, lasting anxiety that it will disrupt her life for years.
He declines a dinner invitation from a new colleague, worrying that an awkward, forced conversation will ruin his entire evening and leave him feeling drained.
Biases rarely arrive alone.
Understand more. Assume less.
188 biases, 18,869 scenarios, and a record of how you actually decide.
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