PSYC3032 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Affective Forecasting, Ikea, Decision Fatigue
Document Summary
About the future: psychology studies the past, causal models of behaviour. Future has advantages: can still change it, adaptive to orient toward future, direction of evolution. Does evolution have direction: purely random, adapt to random changes in the environment. Little evolution of simple creatures: develop capacity to learn, use past experience to guide current behaviour, base behaviour on future rather than past, mythology of prescience (astrology, mystic reading, etc. ) Appealing myth - really want to and important to know future vs past. Background: themes of prior research on prospection: expectancies. Found even in simple animals: pattern completion (lightning and thunder, not very far into future. Long disputed by 1960"s animal researchers: animals vs humans, roberts, animals "stuck in time" - limited expectations, animals live in the moment. If a year from now vs two years from today, preferences reverse: people will wait for the .
