The Highs (and Lows) in Life Don’t Last as Long as You Think
Hey, Packers fans, have you started to come down from your cloud yet? I was about as euphoric as anyone when the final seconds of the Super Bowl ticked down last night, but then my kids — up way past their bedtime (thank you for the late start time, NFL) — began to fall apart from fatigue and over-stimulation, and I was vividly reminded of some fascinating reading I’ve done in the past year on “affective forecasting.”
In essence, the lesson derived from many years of psychological research is this: people have a pronounced tendency to overestimate how long both happy and sad emotional states will last, even in response to major life events. For instance, research shows that lottery winners come back to earth much more quickly than you would think, while accident victims who suffer permanently disabling injuries also tend to return to their prior emotional state after a readjustment period. An excellent introduction to this research is Jeremy A. Blumenthal, Law and Emotions: The Problems of Affective Forecasting, 80 Ind. L.J. 155 (2005).
As Blumenthal observes, the research has some interesting implications for law. Here are some thoughts, for instance, on implications for criminal punishment.