Affective Forecasting and Need for Achievement: The Intense Emotion of Mastery Needs and the Features of Focalism

When predicting future emotions, i.e. engaging in affective forecasting, people tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of emotions, termed the impact bias. We investigated the intensity component of affective forecasts, exploring how a student sample (N = 108) predicted the intensity of their own future (un)happiness following an excellent and a poor exam grade. First, we addressed whether impact bias might serve a motivational purpose, by exploring whether individual differences in achievement motivation predicts forecasted intensity. Moreover, we tested the effect of an attentional focusing manipulation for a poor or good exam grade, and whether achievement motivation moderated the focusing effect. Individual differences in mastery needs were related to the intensity of forecasted emotions. Performance needs were unrelated to forecasts. The focusing manipulation caused a slight reduction in forecasted intensity for a poor grade, but did not influence forecasts for an excellent grade. No moderation effect was found