Imagine you’re on a train. Strangers are seated all around you. You’d like to have the most pleasant possible train ride, and you have a choice: talk to a stranger or keep to yourself. Which do you choose? We know what most of us do: we keep to ourselves. Who wants to deal with a random stranger? They’ll probably talk our ear off. Also, we want to get some work done or just enjoy some music or a podcast. This kind of prediction about what will make us happy is known in psychology as “affective forecasting.” We are constantly making predictions about how all kinds of things in our lives, large
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