| dc.description.abstract | Affective forecasting is critical for effective decision making as people strive to attain goals that increase positive feelings and decrease negative feelings. Despite its importance in relation to choice, research has shown that forecasts of future feelings are often biased. Individual characteristics, such as anxiety, influence people’s predictions of their future emotions. However, there is scant, and often contradictory, research on affective forecasting and its pertinent mechanisms in anxious individuals. Further investigation into biased forecasts in this population is important, as highly anxious individuals exhibit cognitive biases that result in maladaptive behaviors and impair functioning. This study examined whether perceived lack of control, a vulnerability underlying the etiology of anxiety, influences forecasts of negative emotion in highly anxious individuals. Participants were told about an opportunity to participate in a paid study, in which they would be evaluated and selected based on their performance on a pre-screen task. Participants then predicted how they would feel in response to being selected or rejected. Once participants completed the pre-screen task, they were told that they were rejected from the paid study and were asked to report their emotional experiences. Findings revealed that when highly anxious individuals were in a condition with high versus low control over decisions, they demonstrated greater forecasting bias of negative emotion, predicting they would be more upset than they actually were. This suggests that increased perceived control may actually heighten highly anxious individuals’ negative affect about negative outcomes, thus perpetuating biased forecasts in this population. Results did not demonstrate any meaningful relationships among affective forecasts, emotional experiences, and affective memory. | |
