up:: [[Aidan's Infinite Play 20 I Solved My Dilemma! (For Now)]] Status:: Tags:: #🌱 Links:: [[Stumbling on Happiness]] [[Affective forecasting]] [[Imaging something makes it seem more likely]] [[We tend to see things more abstractly when they are more distant temporally, spatially, or emotionally]] [[Why you should stop asking kids what they want to be in the future]]. # Projection Bias ### Our Present State Biases Imagination Projection bias describes how when imagining the future humans tend to extrapolate their present self's state without realizing it. For example, if you go to the grocery store while you are hungry you are likely to buy way way more items than if you went while you were perfectly satiated. Your present hungry self fails to realize your future self won't be hungry after eating just a bit of food and vastly overcompensates for the fact. People use their current feelings as an anchor for answering questions related to the future. We misattribute our feelings now to how we will feel in the future. For example, in one study, researchers telephoned people in different parts of the country and asked them how satisfied they were with their lives. When people who lived in cities that happened to be having nice weather that day imagined their lives, they reported that their lives were relatively happy; but when people who lived in cities that happened to be having bad weather that day imagined their lives, they reported that their lives were relatively unhappy. ### Our Imaginations Of The Future Are Built Upon Our Memories Of The Past In addition to using our present experience, we use the past as a reference for imagining the future because it's the only foundation we have. But what happened in the past might not be indicative of what will happen in the future. In turn our visions of the future often aren't often accurate of what it will actually be like. ### Our Present Context Influences Imaginations The context we are in when making a buying decision profoundly alters how we will make the decision. If we aren't careful we can see ourselves agonizing over attributes we didn't even care about in a buying choice but just happen to be deciding over when we are in a store with lots of different items. [For example say you go to a super mega giant camera store. Because side-by-side comparisons cause you to consider all the attributes on which the cameras differ, you could end up considering things you don’t really care about but that just so happen to distinguish one camera from another.]() This suggests you should consider the situation you will use the thing in the future when making a buying decision.