Self-Serving Optimism in Well-Being Prediction: People Believe in a Bright Future for Themselves and Their Friends, but Not for Their Enemies

Psychological well-being is remarkably stable over time. However, people may still believe that the future will deviate from the past. Across four experiments in Norway and the United States (N = 1,827), 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 in their historical baseline. We observed the same optimistic pattern for a 1-year as a 5-year time horizon. Rather than reflecting a past-neglecting cognitive mechanism, the evidence mostly favored a motivational explanation. First, the effect emerged both between-subjects and within-subjects: Even when people had just reported their past well-being, they still predicted future improvement. Second, predicted well-being improvement generalized to social judgments of a friend but not to an enemy, mediated by judgments of deservingness. In conclusion, people predict a bright future when they want to see one.