Psychologists have studied this kind of misprediction with respect to both pleasant and unpleasant events. We overestimate the effects of both kinds of future events on our lives. We seem to be in a psychological predicament that makes us do so. This predicament is called “anticipated utility” by Danny Kahneman and “affective forecasting” by Dan Gilbert. The point is not so much that we tend to mispredict our future happiness, but rather that we do not learn recursively from past experiences. We have evidence of a mental block and distortions in the way we fail to learn from our past errors in
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