Wisdom as Learning from Life Experiences: Affective Forecasting for Benevolent and Selfish Behaviors
Wisdom is defined along three components
- Accurate affective forecasts
- Predicting correctly one’s emotional reactions following one’s moral decisions.
- Accurate interpersonal affective forecasts
- Predicting accurately the emotional reactions of others to one’s moral choices. This is an important component of many traditional definitions of wisdom, but has been largely neglected empirically.
- Applying this knowledge
- Choosing benevolent (over hurtful) actions because they will yield the greatest positive affect both for the self and for others.
Summary Points
- His research has focused on affective forecasting for moral behaviors. He found that individuals feel worse after competition and, better after cooperation than they would have predicted!
- Recent work on affective forecasting suggests that individuals are poor emotional time travelers.
- Series of experimental laboratory studies and a six-month longitudinal study of couples designed to investigate the following three questions:
- Do affective forecasting errors occur for moral decisions? Differences between predicted and actual emotional consequences of benevolent behavior (e.g., forgiving a dating partner) versus hurtful behavior (e.g., retaliating against a dating partner) are examined.
- Do interpersonal affective forecasting errors occur for moral decisions? Differences between individuals’ predictions about the emotional experiences of others and others’ actual emotional experiences as a consequence of individuals’ benevolent or hurtful behavior are investigated.
- Who is “wise”? Researchers attempt to identify the wisest (i.e., most accurate affective forecasters) individuals via a series of personality measures.
- Colleagues: Jody Davis, Eli Finkel, and Glenn Lucke
Text from Wisdom Institute
This project has focused on affective forecasting for moral behaviors. The research has found that individuals feel worse after competition and better after cooperation than they would have predicted. For example, members of couples who have sacrificed for their partner report feeling better than they expected. Forecasting errors may lead to choices that make the self and others worse off. This approach to wisdom is consistent with classical Greek and Hebrew approaches that emphasize virtue, as well as recent psychological approaches (e.g., Baltes; Ardelt) that address the pragmatics of living amidst uncertainty. Future research will examine whether accurate forecasters are more likely to choose benevolent behaviors.
Wisdom as Learning from Life Experiences: Affective Forecasting for Benevolent and Selfish Behaviors Green proposes that wisdom involves an understanding of the moral consequences of our decisions, and applying that knowledge to those decisions. Socrates’ injunction Gnothi seauton (Know Thyself) notwithstanding, social scientists have catalogued the ways in which individuals do not know themselves. Recent work on affective forecasting suggests that individuals are poor emotional time travelers; they tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of their happiness after positive experiences and of their sadness after negative experiences. Almost all affective forecasting research has focused on events that simply happen to people. This research extends affective forecasting research into the realm of moral behavior, and suggests that wisdom includes three components. First, wisdom involves accurate affective forecasts: correctly predicting one’s emotional reactions following one’s moral decisions. Second, wisdom involves accurate interpersonalaffective forecasts: accurately predicting the emotional reactions of others to one’s moral choices. This is an important component of many traditional definitions of wisdom, but has been largely neglected empirically. Third, wisdom involves applying this knowledge: choosing benevolent (over hurtful) actions because they will yield the greatest positive affect both for the self and for others.
This research includes a series of experimental laboratory studies and a six-month longitudinal study of couples designed to investigate the following three questions. Do affective forecasting errors occur for moral decisions? Differences between predicted and actual emotional consequences of benevolent behavior (e.g., forgiving a dating partner) versus hurtful behavior (e.g., retaliating against a dating partner) are examined. Do interpersonal affective forecasting errors occur for moral decisions? Differences between individuals’ predictions about the emotional experiences of others and others’ actual emotional experiences as a consequence of individuals’ benevolent or hurtful behavior are investigated. Finally, who is “wise”? Researchers will attempt to identify the wisest (i.e., most accurate affective forecasters) individuals via a series of personality measures.
With colleagues, Jody Davis, Eli Finkel, and Glenn Lucke, Green refined the method for a series of laboratory experiments. The first experiment involved predicting one’s affect regarding cooperation versus competition. The design was 2 (experiencer vs. forecaster) x 2 (cooperative, competitive) between-subjects. Participants in the experiencer condition were trained in the Prisoners Dilemma Game (PDG), and were told that they were going to play the PDG via computer with another participant in a different room. Individuals made choices very quickly on the PDG and then were given false feedback that they had cooperated with their partner (thus helping the partner win some money) or competed against their partner (thus preventing the partner from winning money). They then reported how they felt. Others simply predicted how they thought they would feel in that scenario, allowing a direct comparison between forecasters and experiencers.
A second lab experiment is underway in which individuals make a series of predictions about a variety of events, and then experience one of those events three weeks later in the lab. They unexpectedly receive $5 and have the option of keeping the money or donating it to charity. Individuals then report how they feel about acting more benevolently or selfishly; those feelings are compared to their predicted feelings.
https://wisdomcenter.uchicago.edu/about/project-1-defining-wisdom