Happiness and reminiscing: The role of time perspective, affect, and mode of thinking.

TLDR

Happiness is influenced by the affective quality of everyday experiences, yet the relationship is complex, as negative events can sometimes boost well‑being and extreme hedonic events are poor predictors of overall satisfaction. The study explores mediating mechanisms and implications of how the manner of reminiscing affects life‑satisfaction judgments. Three experiments revealed that general life‑satisfaction ratings depend on both the hedonic quality of recalled events and the mode of thinking; present‑event hedonic quality directly shapes judgments, while past‑event hedonic quality only influences judgments when reminiscing evokes present affect, which in turn depends on vivid, detailed descriptions and on describing how rather than why events occurred.

Abstract

Three experiments showed that subjects' ratings of general life satisfaction depended not only on the hedonic quality of the life experiences they happened to recall but also on the way in which they thought about them. Specifically, the hedonic quality of present life events influenced subjects' judgments of well-being in the same direction. The hedonic quality of past events, however, had a congruent impact on well-being judgments only when thinking about them elicited affect in the present but otherwise had a contrast effect on these judgments. Two factors were found to determine if thinking about the past elicits affect: whether subjects describe the events vividly and in detail or only mention them briefly, and whether subjects describe how the events occurred rather than why they occurred. Possible mediating mechanisms and implications of these results are discussed. People's feelings of happiness and satisfaction are no doubt a function of the affective quality of their everyday experiences. The nature of this relation, however, is not as straightforward as one might expect. For example, whereas negative experiences do frequently decrease individuals' perceptions of their quality of life (e.g., Zautra & Reich, 1983), some findings indicate that negative events may also increase subjective well-being (Elder, 1974). In fact, even events of extreme hedonic value seem to be poor predictors of individuals' wellbeing. For example, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) found in their study that people who won a million dollars in a lottery