Mindfulness is a nonjudgmental, present-centered attention to one’s thoughts and emotions. Using a sample of 188 young adults who forecasted their emotions for the weeks following the 2008 Presidential election, we tested our prediction that facets of mindfulness would decrease the impact bias, a well-known error in affective forecasting. Mindfulness was measured with the Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006). One facet of mindfulness, observing one’s internal state, was associated with more moderate affective forecasts as well as a decreased susceptibility to the impact bias. Findings highlight sources of individual differences in susceptibility to the impact bias and shed light on how to improve people’s ability to forecast for emotional experiences.
Affective forecasting involves predicting one’s future emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). People are generally poor at predicting how they will feel following emotionally-charged life events (Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheately, 1998). In general, people err by over-estimating the impact of life events. They predict that they will be happier than they actually will be following positive events and unhappier than they actually will be following negative events.
The error of over-estimating an event’s emotional impact is known as the impact bias (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). Wilson and Gilbert (2003) suggested that focalism is a main reason why people make this error. Focalism causes people to concentrate solely on the specific event and fail to realize that other co-occurring events will influence their future emotions as well (Wilson, Wheately, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000). Focalism occurs whether people are focusing on the emotional impact of a positive or negative event, and thus the impact bias explains affective forecasting errors observed across a wide range of events (Wilson et al., 2000).
Despite clear evidence for biases in affective forecasting, relatively little is known about factors that reduce these biases. One study found that East Asians were less susceptible to the impact bias than Euro-Canadians, likely because East Asians are more holistic in their thinking and, thus, more aware of all events that may be occurring and impacting one’s emotional experiences (Lam, Buehler, McFarland, Ross, & Cheung, 2005). These findings suggest that the perspectives people take on their emotional experiences may make them less susceptible to biases in affective forecasting.
We suggest that mindfulness represents a perspective on emotional experiences that is likely to influence people’s affective forecasts. Mindfulness is a nonjudgmental acceptance of one’s emotions and thoughts while being present-centered (Bishop et al., 2004). Although mindfulness has roots in Eastern philosophy, it has recently become a non-secular practice of many Westerners. Most definitions of mindfulness emphasize an awareness, observation, and acceptance without judgment of one’s feelings and thoughts (Baer et al., 2008 and Grossman, 2008). Mindfulness allows for an understanding that, although negative emotions may occur, they are not a permanent part of one’s identity. Moreover, mindfulness may allow a person to respond to events more reflectively, rather than automatically (Bishop et al., 2004). Thus, a mindful perspective allows individuals to be more cognizant of how life events influence their emotional experiences, enabling individuals to make predictions that are less susceptible to the impact bias.
Several questionnaires (see Baer et al., 2004 and Baer et al., 2006) have been developed to measure individual differences in people’s tendency to be mindful. The Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ; Baer et al., 2006) subsumes five previous mindfulness scales into five facets of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging of inner experience, and nonreactivity to inner experience. Each factor measures distinct skills inherent in the concept of mindfulness.
Although any of these mindfulness facets could be potentially important in the affective forecasting process, we hypothesize that two facets seem particularly relevant to predicting future emotions: observing and acting with awareness. The observe facet reflects how often an individual attends to internal experiences – such as sensations and emotions – as well as the outside environment. Thus, this perspective may allow individuals to avoid staying focused on a single event and be cognizant of how their emotional experiences tend to ebb and flow due to many influences. Another facet, acting with awareness, assesses how individuals attend to their activities with a careful consideration and concentration of the present moment. The ability to act with awareness may also reduce susceptibility to the impact bias, as those who tend to act with awareness may be more aware of the many events that co-occur at a given time in the future.
The current study examines how facets of mindfulness may reduce people’s susceptibility to the impact bias. We predict that people who report a greater tendency to observe their emotions and act with awareness should be less prone to making affective forecasts that overestimate the emotional impact of an event on their future happiness. We used the 2008 United States presidential election as our focal event, as people are known to overestimate the extent to which the outcome of elections will impact their future happiness (Gilbert et al., 1998). Furthermore, we tested these hypotheses in a sample of young adults, many of whom would be participating in their first political election.
