According to Dan Gilbert, there are two reasons that explain why we often fail to imagine ourselves in a future situation or event. The first one is that it is impossible to take into account all the details that will be part of the event. But the second and most important one, is that we don’t even consider that we might not be the same people we were before than we are now.
Explained in his own words:
“Every future event comprises thousands and thousands of details, but when you ask people to imagine a future event, they usually imagine one or two of those details, the ones that are central that define the episode. So if I say to you: imagine the next visit to the dentist, probably you’ll get a picture in your head instantly of sitting in a chair and someone’s fooling around in your mouth. Well that is indeed a part of the experience you’ll have. But you’ll also have to park, you’re also going to be on the waiting room, they’re going to be playing music, there will be magazines, the receptionist will be nice OR NOT, afterwards you will or wont have an appointment you’ll need to rush to… there’s lots of other parts of that experience that you’re not imagining and ALL OF THEM can affect your happiness.
You CAN’T imagine every detail, that’s not possible. But what you ought to do rationally is think to yourself: i’m only imagining one or two of the many pieces of the experience and, as a result, I SHOULD be very HUMBLE about my prediction; but nobody is. Instead they say: a dental visit? I’ll hate it!
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One problem is that we don’t imagine events correctly, we don’t imagine them as they will unfold, that’s the smaller of the two problems. The larger problem is that we don’t know who we will be when we are experiencing that event. We underestimate the mind’s ability to react to events in a different way than its reacting to them in prospect. Things look different at the windshield than in the rear view mirror. Life is like that too, almost every event you experience feels different once you’ve experience it, than you imagined you would have beforehand. That’s the part of our psychology we don’t seem very good at anticipating.”
