Emotional time travel: Emotion regulation and the overestimation of future anger and sadness

In the present study we examined the role of four specific forms of reappraisal in people's overestimation of their future experiences of anger and sadness. Results show that forecasters predicted to experience more intense anger and sadness following social exclusion than experiencers actually felt. This impact bias was shown in both the overall intensity of these emotions and their associated response tendencies. Results also show that forecasters indicated less reappraisal of the situation than experiencers actually employ. Moreover, for experiencers, reappraisal (i.e., relativisation) of social exclusion decreased their experience of anger, whereas forecasters' predicted reappraisal was not related to their forecasted experience of anger. These findings add importantly to earlier research by indicating how a specific emotion regulatory process (i.e., reappraisal) is related to the impact bias in affective forecasting. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.