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Self-serving optimism in hedonic prediction: People believe in a bright future for themselves and their friends, but not for their enemies

According to longitudinal research, psychological well-being is remarkably stable over time. However, people may still believe that the future will deviate from the past. Across three experiments in Norway and USA (N=1,130; two pre-registered), participants were randomly assigned to report their well-being in the past or predict their future well-being. In line with a "bright-future hypothesis", people predicted higher levels of happiness and meaning in the future than their historical baseline from the past. We observed the same optimistic pattern for a 5-year horizon as a 1-year horizon, and participants who viewed themselves as pessimistic were no exception. Rather than being a cognitive illusion, the evidence favored a motivational explanation. Specifically, the effect was found both in separate judgment between-persons and joint evaluation within-persons, which means that participants did not "correct" their predictions even when the contrast with their own past became explicit (Study 2). This suggests that the participants believed that their future optimism was rational and accurate, although it deviates from their personal experience and is statistically unrealistic. Highlighting the social dimension of well-being predictions, our final experiment found that the expectation of future improvement generalized to judgments of a friend, but not to an enemy (Study 3). Seen as a whole, the results suggest that people predict a bright future when they want to see one.