Role of affective forecasting in customers’ hotel service experiences

Purpose Research on the role of affective forecasting in hotel service experiences is in its infancy, and several crucial questions remain unanswered. This study aims to posit that affective forecasting is a significant antecedent of customers’ affective reactions during a hotel stay. The authors investigate how customers’ service quality expectations influence their affective forecasting and how customers’ affective forecasting before an upcoming hotel service experience influences their affective reactions during the hotel service experience. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data through online questionnaires distributed among 634 US adults who had stayed at a hotel within the past month. Findings The results show that: service quality expectations influence affective forecasting; affective forecasting influences affective reactions; service quality expectations influence perceived service quality, thereby influencing affective reactions and affective reactions and service quality perception influence electronic Word-Of-Mouth intentions. Practical implications The study suggests that hotel managers should identify what hotel performance attributes customers value most and depict how these attributes elicit positive affective reactions in advertising to influence customers’ purchase decisions. Originality/value This is one of the few studies to investigate the antecedents and consequences of affective forecasting in hotel service experiences.

Underappreciated Benefits of Reading Own and Others' Memories

These studies investigate underappreciated benefits of reading memories, including memories of other people, for happiness, psychological well-being, and loneliness. In the studies, college students (Study 1), residents of assisted-living facilities (Study 2), and MTurk workers online (Study 3) wrote down memories. They also predicted how they would feel after reading their own and others' memories at a later date. Then, later on, participants read memories that they or another participant had written. Individuals felt happier, less lonely, and higher in well-being after reading memories, regardless of whether those memories were their own or someone else's. Participants underpredicted the affect boost that they would gain from reading memories. This affective forecasting error was related to individuals' perceptions of the “mundaneness” of the memories, and the error was especially pronounced when individuals read others' memories rather than their own. Implications of reading memories for promoting well-being and reducing loneliness are discussed.

Negative valence effect in affective forecasting: The unique impact of the valence among dispositional and contextual factors for certain life events

Decades of research on affective forecasting have shown a persistent intensity bias—a strong tendency by which people overestimate their future hedonic response for positive events and underestimate it for negatives one. While previous research has provided answers on the isolated impact of various individual or contextual factors, this study is original in that it brings them together to determine which ones most influence the inaccuracy of affective forecasting. Participants were asked to predict their emotional satisfaction for a personal life event, the course (positive or negative) and date of which were already known. First, the results support previous research by showing that affective predictions are highly associated with people’s affective experience. Moreover, multiple regression showed that among the individual and contextual factors previously reported to be in relation with affective forecasting inaccuracy, only the valence of the event could explain inaccuracy of forecasting. According to a growing body of literature, these findings point out a tendency to underestimate the intensity of the affect predicted both for negative and positive, with a stronger underestimation for negative events: the negative valence effect.

The past of predicting the future: A review of the multidisciplinary history of affective forecasting

Affective forecasting refers to the ability to predict future emotions, a skill that is essential to making decisions on a daily basis. Studies of the concept have determined that individuals are often inaccurate in making such affective forecasts. However, the mechanisms of these errors are not yet clear. In order to better understand why affective forecasting errors occur, this article seeks to trace the theoretical roots of this theory with a focus on its multidisciplinary history. The roots of affective forecasting lie mainly in economics, with early claims positing that utility (i.e. satisfaction) played a role in decision-making. Furthermore, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s descriptions of utilitarianism played a major role in our understanding of whether to define utility as a hedonic quality. The birth of behavioural economics resulted in a paradigm shift, introducing the concept of cognitive biases as influences on the accuracy of predicted utility. Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson, the earliest researchers of affective forecasting errors, have proceeded with the concept of the accuracy of predicted affective utility to conduct experiments that seek to determine why our predictions of future affect are inaccurate and how such errors play a role in our decision-making.