2009/05/12 by Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson
paper · doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0305
People typically choose pleasure over pain. But how do they know which of these their choices will entail? The brain generates mental simulations ( previews ) of future events, which produce affective reactions ( premotions ), which are then used as a basis for forecasts ( predictions ) about the future event's emotional consequences. Research shows that this process leads to systematic errors of prediction. We review evidence indicating that these errors can be traced to five sources.