According to a growing body of studies, people’s ability to forecast future emotional experiences is generally biased. Nonetheless, the existing literature has mainly explored affective forecasting in relation to specific events, whereas little is still known about the ability to make general estimations of future emotional states. Based on existing evidence suggesting future-oriented disposition as a key factor for mental health, the aims of the current study were (1) to investigate the relationship between negative (NA) and positive (PA) affective forecasting (...) biases and perceived psychological well-being, and (2) to explore whether positively biased predictions are associated with resilience and foster one’s skills to cope with stressful events. To do so, we asked 85 undergraduate students to forecast PA and NA over 2 weeks, as well as to report their daily affect through a web-based Ecological Momentary Assessment. According to the results, positively biased PA forecasting (i.e., overestimating positive emotional states) was associated with greater perceived psychological well-being and higher resilience. When high levels of stress were experienced, participants holding an optimistic, yet biased, estimation of future PA were more likely to successfully manage stressors, thus maintaining lower levels of NA and higher levels of positive emotions. We suggest that positively biased PA forecasting is an adaptive cognitive distortion that boosts people’s resilience and mental health, thus opening new avenues for the promotion of psychological well-being. (shrink)

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Justification thinking (using excuses to “allow” giving into temptation) has been identified as a potential link between negative affect and self-control failure. We hypothesised that negative affect would prompt greater justification thinking, specifically deservingness thinking (i.e. “I deserve a treat”), and tested this for both inhibitory (temptation is to approach reward; self-control is to inhibit) and initiatory (temptation is to refrain from action, self-control is to initiate action) hypothetical self-control dilemmas. We found that only for inhibitory self-control (Study 1; N (...) = 105) but not initiatory (Study 2; N = 116), negative affect resulted in greater deservingness thinking compared to neutral affect. We also hypothesised that negative mood coupled with justification would prompt greater likelihood of imagined self-control failure. We found that for inhibitory self-control (Study 3; N = 569), participants in negative affect (vs. neutral) and justification (vs. no justification) conditions were independently more likely to report they would fail at self-control. For initiatory self-control (Study 4; N = 321), we found an effect of negative affect on hypothetical self-control failure but no effect of justification. Overall, these studies confirm the role of negative affect in self-control processes and highlight differences between inhibitory and initiatory self-control situations. (shrink)

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