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Impact bias is a cognitive bias that refers to the tendency for people to overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to future events. This often leads individuals to predict that they will experience greater impacts, both positive and negative, from future events than they actually do.
Impact bias occurs as individuals predict their future emotional states based on current feelings or expectations. The bias arises because people fail to accurately consider their ability to adapt and the transient nature of emotional responses. They often underestimate how quickly they will recover from negative events or how the euphoria of positive events will diminish over time.
Some psychologists argue that while impact bias is a documented phenomenon, it may not hold uniformly across all individuals and contexts. Personality traits, past experiences, and cultural influences can significantly alter the tendency to exhibit impact bias.
Affective forecasting: Knowing what to want
Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson (2007)
Current Directions in Psychological Science
The trouble with affective forecasting: Why predicting our future feelings is so difficult
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Emotion