Calibration of Retrospective and Prospective Life Satisfaction Judgments Around the World

Abstract

It is both a physical and psychological fact that humans have access to records of the past but not to records of the future. Due to this epistemic asymmetry in time, we hypothesized that retrospection about past psychological states will be better calibrated than prospection about future psychological states. Leveraging data from the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, involving 61,271 participants sampled across 34 countries, we examined the calibration and bias of individuals' evaluations of past and future life satisfaction relative to present evaluations. We employed novel methods for the analysis of calibration and bias in multi-wave, cross-sectional data. A multi-method analysis contrasted individual and national-level evaluations of life satisfaction across two cross-sectional waves, 5 years apart, with numerous control variables to account for potential confounding factors. We observed miscalibration in prospective judgments of future life satisfaction, whereas retrospective judgments of past life satisfaction showed no meaningful miscalibration. The findings support the epistemic asymmetry hypothesis that there is a psychological effect of the physical arrow of time on human judgment, robust across diverse samples worldwide.