Thinking and Deciding

ADAPTATION, CONTRAST, AND HEURISTICS 493
we are better off if we believe that it is likely to occur, because we can savor it for a
long time, but when the outcome is imminent we have little time to savor it, and our
main concern is to avoid disappointment, so we are better off if we believe it is not
likely to occur — if we “don’t get our hopes up.”
Loewenstein and Linville tested this account by giving subjects a test that the
subjects thought was related to intelligence. Half of the subjects were told that they
would receive their scores immediately after the session, and the other half were
told that they would receive their scores in two weeks. As the researchers predicted,
the first group of subjects had lower expectations about their scores than the second
group, and, as the end of the session approached, the expectations of subjects in
the first group fell even more. (The experimenters did not ask the subjects in the
second group about their expectations after the session.) In sum, this experiment
suggests that we have desires concerning our hopes and disappointments and that we
manipulate our expectations (deceive ourselves) to maximize the utility we derive
from them. (Gilovich, Kerr, and Medvec, 1993, report similar results.)
Although this experiment does not concern decision making, it does show that
we have emotions concerning future outcomes and that we are concerned with these
emotions as well as with the outcomes themselves. Some of these emotions, particularly
the impatience that results from the contrast between our present state and a
better state that we could choose to have very soon, could cause us to neglect our
futures irrationally.
Adaptation, contrast, and heuristics
Psychologists have known for some time that experience establishes a reference
point, against which future experiences are compared (Helson, 1964). This works
for such sensations as that of heat and cold — a piece of metal at room temperature
will feel warm to the touch of a hand just removed from ice water — and it seems to
work for pleasure and displeasure as well. Most of us know about this, so we take
care not to “ruin” the experience of going to our favorite restaurants or listening to
our favorite pieces of music by doing these things repeatedly in quick succession. So
we try to spread out good experiences.
Because of the same adaptation effect, we also benefit more from improvement
than from slow decline, given the same total level of pleasure averaged over time.
With improvement, we benefit from the continuous pleasure to be derived from the
contrast of our current state to the preceding state. Thus, although we discount future
experiences, most people tend to want to get bad experiences over with. This might
be a matter of avoiding dread, but it might also be a matter of preferring improvement.
These two heuristics — spreading good outcomes out and preferring improvement
over decline — are like other heuristics in that they are used even when they
do not serve their purpose of maximizing the total utility of experiences. They generate
some interesting framing effects, as shown by Loewenstein and Prelec (1993).