If I’m told about a future event I may take part in, I feel that I’m the best estimator of what my own emotional response will be to that event. Experimental psychology results described in “The Surprising Power of Neighborly Advice” (published March 20, 2009 in Science) show that not only is this what we all typically think but also that it’s false.

Each participant in the experiments was either given information about an event that they’d take part in or was provided the opinion of another participant on how much they thought the individual would enjoy (or not) the future event. Each participant was then asked to rate how much they were likely to enjoy (or not) the future event. After providing a rating the participant was exposed to the other set of information (the opinion of another participant or information about the future event) so that, by the time of the event, all participants were exposed to the same set of information. After the event, each participant stated how much they enjoyed (or not) the event.

The researchers then compared the emotional response each individual predicted with the response they reported at the end of the event. The results showed that those who heard the opinion of another participant on how they may respond to an event were significantly more accurate in predicting their final response than those who simply knew details about the upcoming event.

The results are intriguing. Nevertheless, I wonder if unconscious influence (priming) may be at work here even in those who did not get the neighborly advice before estimating their future emotional response (see my blog post “Is the Conscious Decision an Illusion? Pursuing Goals Unconsciously“). That is, not only is the input from another participant influencing the individual’s estimate of their emotional response to a future event but it’s influencing their perception of the event itself (while it happens). In this case, the influenced perception of the event itself would happen to both those who got advice before and those who received advice after they predicted their future emotional response. That would explain the good predictions of the former and the poor predictions made by the latter.


Other related blog posts:

Is the Conscious Decision an Illusion? Pursuing Goals Unconsciously