MANUSCRIPT UNDER REVIEW PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT PERMISSION Affective forecasting for future consumption improves across the life span

Affective forecasting plays a major role in consumer choice but suffers from many systematic errors. However, little is known about how forecasting accuracy changes over the adult life span. We present four studies that investigate age differences in consumers’ ability to forecast how they will feel about upcoming events (e.g., receiving a gift basket). We show one way that affective forecasting improves across the life span: Older adults are less likely than younger adults to wrongly predict that their affective response to an event will be less intense if the event occurs later in time—a reduction of future anhedonia. We find this age-related improvement for predictions about money as well as consumer goods, but not for predictions about losses. An examination of underlying mechanisms suggests that the age difference in future anhedonia is driven by age differences in the perceived psychological connectedness between one’s current and future self. Further, we show that less susceptibility to future anhedonia may contribute to older adults’ more patient temporal discounting. These results have implications for age-related changes in an array of consumer judgments including product evaluation, consumer satisfaction, and purchase regret.