Title: Prospective Hedonics: How Anticipating the Future Changes Enjoyment of Past and Present

Speaker: Prof. Tom Meyvis, Associate Professor of Marketing,

Daniel P. Paduano,Faculty Fellow, Stern School of Business, New York University

Time: 1:30-3:00pm, September 21, 2010

Location : Room 215, New Building of GSM, Peking University.

Abstract:

Prospective Hedonics: How Anticipating the Future Changes Enjoyment of Past

and Present

We often anticipate future hedonic experiences: we dread a visit to the

dentist and we savor an upcoming trip to a tropical island. Yet, aside from

this direct effect on our current happiness, the anticipation of future

events can also change our perceived enjoyment of specific past and present

events.

In a first set of studies (with Leif Nelson), we demonstrate that, although

people do not contrast their enjoyment of a current experience against their

enjoyment of a preceding experience (Novemsky & Ratner 2003), they do

contrast it against their enjoyment of an anticipated experience. A piece of

classical music does not become more enjoyable after listening to an

irritating noise, but does become more enjoyable when people anticipate

having to listen to the noise afterwards. Similarly, an irritating noise

becomes more irritating in anticipation of listening to a popular song.

However, when the current experience is more ambiguous, the anticipated

experience can contaminate the current experience, resulting in an

assimilation effect instead: listening to mildly irritating music becomes

more enjoyable in anticipation of a popular song.

In a second set of studies (with Jeff Galak), we examine how the

anticipation of an experience influences your perceived enjoyment of that

same experience in the past. In particular, we examine how the perceived

aversiveness of an unpleasant experience is influenced by the anticipated

continuation of the experience. We propose that people engage in strategic

pessimism and “brace for the worst” by convincing themselves that the

experience is more aversive when they expect the experience to be repeated.

In a first field study, we observe that runners who anticipate running up a

hill or are in the middle of running up a hill perceive this experience as

more aversive than runners who have just finished running up the hill,

consistent with the perspective that the first two groups are bracing for

the upcoming (or remaining) experience. In subsequent lab studies, we find

that people who anticipate a repetition of their experience find an

irritating noise more annoying and a tedious task more boring than people

who know they are done with the experience. However, since strategic bracing

for an upcoming unpleasant experience implies devoting current resources to

reduce future displeasure, the effect should not hold when people do not

have sufficient resources to allocate. Consistent with this prediction, the

effect of anticipation disappears when people’s resources are depleted after

engaging in a difficult choice task (whereas the effect replicates if the

choice task is easy)

the paper for the second project is the following:

Galak, Jeff and Tom Meyvis, “