10815_Picture This – The Effect of Imagery Perspective on Affective Forecasting

Wilfrid Laurier University
Wilfrid Laurier University
Scholars Commons @ Laurier
Scholars Commons @ Laurier
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)
2020
Picture This: The Effect of Imagery Perspective on Affective
Picture This: The Effect of Imagery Perspective on Affective
Forecasting
Forecasting
Giselle Durand
gdurand@wlu.ca
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Durand, Giselle, “Picture This: The Effect of Imagery Perspective on Affective Forecasting” (2020). Theses
and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 2289.
https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/2289
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PICTURE THIS: THE EFFECT OF IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE ON AFFECTIVE
FORECASTING

By

Giselle Durand

THESIS

Submitted to the Faculty of Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for

Master of Arts, Psychology

Wilfrid Laurier University

© Giselle Durand 2020

IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

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Picture this: The effect of imagery perspective on affective forecasting
Abstract
This thesis examines whether or not the perspective that one takes when visualizing a future
event influences one’s affective forecasts about that target event. When imagining a future event,
people can adopt a first person perspective (as they would see it through their own eyes as it was
actually occurring) or a third person perspective (as an observer would see it). I ran five studies
to test the hypothesis that the perspective adopted while visualizing a future event has a
differential effect on the forecasts of self-conscious vs. hedonic emotions. Specifically, I
hypothesized that people forecast stronger self-conscious emotions when visualizing a future
event from the third person perspective than from the first person perspective, but that the
opposite holds true when forecasting hedonic emotions. In each study, participants selected a
significant, positive event that they expected to occur within the next month, imagined that event
from one of the two perspectives, and then forecasted several different emotions, some of which
were hedonic in nature, and others that were self-conscious. Results of the five studies did not
provide clear or consistent support for my hypothesis. Limitations of the studies are discussed
and suggestions for future research are provided.

IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

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Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges Roger Buehler for supervising this research and providing
support and guidance throughout. The author also thanks Anne Wilson, Christian Jordan, Greta
Valenti, and the social psychology faculty and graduate students at Wilfrid Laurier University for
valuable feedback on research design and the contents of this paper.

IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

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Table of Contents

Abstract ……………………………………………..……………………………………………. i

Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………………… ii

Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………………………….. iii

List of Tables ……………………………………………………………………………………. v

List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………………… vii

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 1

Literature Review ………………………………………………………………………………… 2

Affective Forecasting ……………………………………………………………………. 2

Imagery Perspective ……………………………………………………………………… 4

The Nature of Emotions …………………………………………………………………. 8

Study 1A ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 10

Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 11

Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 14

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………… 18

Study 1B ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 19

Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 19

Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 20

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………… 26

Study 2A ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 27

Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 27

Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 29

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………… 32

IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

iv
Study 2B ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 33

Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 33

Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 34

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………… 37

Study 3 ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 39

Method …………………………………………………………………………………. 39

Results ………………………………………………………………………………….. 40

Discussion ……………………………………………………………………………… 44

General Discussion ……………….……………………………………………………………. 45

Appendix A: Study 1A Materials ……………………………………………………………… 65

Appendix B: Study 1B Materials ………………………………………………………………. 73

Appendix C: Study 2A Materials ………………………………………………………………. 82

Appendix D: Study 2B Materials ………………………………………………………………. 90

Appendix E: Study 3 Materials ……………………………………………………………..….. 98

Appendix F: Summary of Moderation Analyses ……………………………………………… 108

References …………………………………………………………………………………….. 122

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List of Tables

Table 1
Zero-Order Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for the Main Study Variables in Study
1A …………………………………………………………………………………………….… 51

Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations of the Main Study Variables by Condition for Study 1A ……. 52

Table 3
Zero-Order Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for the Main Study Variables in Study
1B ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 53

Table 4
Means and Standard Deviations of the Main Study Variables by Condition for Study 1B ……. 54

Table 5
Means and Standard Deviations of Forecasted Hedonic and Self-Conscious Emotions by Event-
Type and Perspective Condition (Studies 1A and 1B) …………………………………………. 55

Table 6
Zero-Order Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for the Main Study Variables in Study
2A …………………………………………………………………………………………….… 56

Table 7
Means and Standard Deviations of the Main Study Variables by Condition for Study 2A ……. 57

Table 8
Zero-Order Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for the Main Study Variables in Study
2B ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 58

Table 9
Means and Standard Deviations of the Main Study Variables by Condition for Study 2B ……. 59

Table 10
Means of Pride and Joy by Perspective Condition for Studies 1A, 1B, 2A and 2B …….……… 60

Table 11
Zero-Order Correlations, Means and Standard Deviations for the Main Study Variables in Study
3 ..………………………………………………………………………………………….……. 61

Table 12
Means and Standard Deviations of the Main Study Variables by Condition for Study 3 ………. 62

Table 13
Means and SDs by Emotion Order by Visual Perspective Condition for Study 3 ………………63
IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

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Table 1F
Summary of Moderators Identified Across All Studies ……………………………………….. 115

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List of Figures

Figure 1F
Temporal distance of the target event as a moderator of the relationship between visual
perspective and forecasted self-conscious affect (Study 1A) ………………………………….. 116

Figure 2F
Perceived control over the target event as a moderator of the relationship between visual
perspective and forecasted self-conscious affect (Study 1A) …………………………………. 116

Figure 3F
Temporal distance of the target event as a moderator of the relationship between visual
perspective and forecasted hedonic affect (Study 1A) ………………………………………… 117

Figure 4F
Event likelihood as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and forecasted
hedonic affect (Study 1A) ……………………………………………………………………… 117

Figure 5F
Perceived positivity of the target event as a moderator of the relationship between visual
perspective and forecasted self-conscious affect (Study 1B) …………………………..……… 118

Figure 6F
Perceived positivity of the target event has a moderator of the relationship between visual
perspective and forecasted hedonic affect (Study 1B) ……………………………………..…. 118

Figure 7F
Event likelihood as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and forecasted
pride (Study 2A) ………………………………………………………………………………. 119

Figure 8F
Event likelihood as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and forecasted
hedonic emotions (Study 2A) ……………………………………………………………..…… 119

Figure 9F
Perceived event importance as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and
forecasted pride (Study 2B) ………………………………………………………………..…. 120

Figure 10F
Perceived event importance as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and
forecasted joy (Study 2B) ……………………………………………………………………… 120

Figure 11F
Perceived event controllability as a moderator of the relationship between visual perspective and
forecasted joy (Study 3) ………………………………………………………………………. 121

IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

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Picture this: The effect of imagery perspective on affective forecasting
Introduction

My thesis research examines people’s predictions of their emotional reactions to future
events. Such predictions, known as affective forecasts, are important because they drive many
significant life decisions. For example, anticipating strong positive reactions to a future event
increases the effort that people expend to produce the event (Morewedge & Buechel, 2013).
Moreover, people have difficulty predicting future feelings accurately and often predict stronger
emotional reactions than they actually experience, a phenomenon referred to as the impact bias
(Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). Thus, researchers in psychology seek to identify factors that moderate
people’s affective forecasts. My research explores the visual perspective that people adopt while
imagining a future event, and how this influences their affective forecasts. Specifically, I explore
whether people predict stronger emotional reactions when they visualize an event from a first-
person perspective (as they would see it from their own eyes when it was actually occurring) or
from a third-person perspective (as if they were an observer watching themselves participating in
the event). I also examine whether the effect of visual perspective on affective forecasting
depends on the type of emotion being forecast. The remainder of this paper is organized as
follows. First, I provide a brief overview of the research on affective forecasting, imagery
perspective and emotions, and identify my hypotheses. Next, I introduce the method used for the
five studies that I conducted, and discuss the results of these studies. Finally, I conclude with a
discussion of the implications and limitations of my studies, and possible areas of future
research.

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Literature Review
Affective Forecasting

People make decisions that have significant implications for their futures, such as which
jobs to take, which relationships to explore, and which goals to pursue. Decisions such as these
are ultimately made in the pursuit of happiness, and therefore necessarily involve people’s
predictions of how various alternatives will make them feel. These emotional predictions, known
as affective forecasts, have been studied extensively because they have important implications
for human behaviour and decision-making (e.g., Morewedge & Buechel, 2013; Wilson &
Gilbert, 2003). Research has identified that, although people can effectively predict the valence
and types of emotions that future events will elicit, they are not particularly good at predicting
the duration or intensity of these emotions (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). More specifically, people
tend to overestimate both the intensity and duration of their future emotions, a phenomenon
known as the impact bias (e.g., Buehler & McFarland, 2001; Gilbert, Morewedge, Risen, &
Wilson, 2004; Hoerger, Quirk, Lucas, & Carr, 2010; Wilson & Gilbert, 2003). For example,
research has shown that people over-predict the intensity of their emotional reactions to exam
grades (Buehler & McFarland, 2001), election results (Hoerger et al., 2010), contest results
(Gilbert et al., 2004), and a variety of participant-elected events (Buehler & McFarland, 2001).
Furthermore, the impact bias is asymmetrical, as it tends to be stronger (both in intensity and
duration) for affective predictions to negative events than to positive ones (e.g., Finkenauer,
Gallucci, van Dijk, & Pollman, 2007; Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998).

Research has identified two primary sources of the impact bias. The first, focalism, is the
tendency to focus only on the target event itself when making affective forecasts, and to,
therefore, underestimate the effect that other peripheral events will have on emotions when the
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future target event occurs (Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000). For example,
Buehler & McFarland (2001) provide evidence that affective forecasts are more extreme when
people focus on the event itself when making their predictions than when they focus on a set of
similar past experiences. It is possible that this emphasis on a set of past experiences brings to
mind other peripheral factors, beyond the target event itself, that can influence how we feel and
therefore tempers affective forecasts. Priming participants with a low level construal encourages
contemplation of such peripheral events and has been shown to reduce the extremity of affective
forecasts (Ayton, Pott, & Elwakili, 2007; Wesp, Sandry, Prisco, & Kadey, 2009). The second
source of the impact bias, immune neglect, is specific to emotional reactions to negative events.
People have a psychological immune system that helps them to rationalize negative events, and
they fail to appreciate the extent to which this psychological immune system will speed up their
emotional recovery (Gilbert et al., 1998; Wilson & Gilbert, 2003).

The impact bias has been shown to generate both positive and negative outcomes. It can
be functional as it serves motivational purposes. For example, making positive affective
predictions can help to improve a currently negative mood when people are in a reflective state
(Buehler, McFarland, Spyropoulos, & Lam, 2007). In addition, people demonstrate a stronger
impact bias for future events to which they are more committed and over whose attainment they
have influence, and this stronger impact bias leads to the exertion of more effort to produce the
future event (Morewedge & Buechel, 2014). Finally, more extreme affective forecasts lead to
greater goal persistence and performance (Greitemeyer, 2009). However, extreme affective
forecasts can also lead to increased persistence even in the face of unattainable goals
(Greitemeyer, 2009), which can result in wasted time and energy (Janoff-Bulman & Brickman,
1982), and emotional distress (Carver & Scheier, 1990). The impact bias has also been found
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when forecasting regret, and forecasted affective regret is negatively related to overall well-being
(Buchanan, Buchanan, & Kadey, 2019). Anticipated negative reactions to information that is
contrary to a person’s beliefs can result in selective exposure to information (Dorinson, Minson,
& Rogers, 2019), and people often anticipate that interactions with outgroup members will be
more negative than what they actually experience when such interactions occur (Mallett, Wilson,
& Gilbert, 2008). Anticipation of such negative affect can reduce willingness to approach
outgroup members (Mendoza-Denton, Downey, & Purdie, 2002), yet contact with outgroups is
important for reducing prejudice (Petigrew & Tropp, 2000). Therefore, the consequences of the
impact bias, both positive and negative, can be far-reaching.

Given the importance of affective forecasting to well-being and behaviour, I seek to add
to this body of literature by exploring a potential moderator of affective forecasts, imagery
perspective. Wilson and Gilbert (2003) identify that, when forecasting affect, people create a
representation of the event that helps them assess their affective reaction to that event, which in
turn guides their affective forecasts. One way that people can create a representation of the target
event is by visualizing it, and they can do so from either a first-person perspective (as they would
see it from their own eyes when it was actually occurring) or from a third-person perspective (as
if they were an observer watching themselves participating in the event). Prior research and
theory on imagery perspective suggests that the intensity of affective forecasts could be
influenced by perspective.
Imagery Perspective

According to a framework developed by Libby and Eibach (2011a), the perspective
adopted during visualization (i.e., first-person perspective (FPP) or third-person perspective
(TPP)) “influences the information people incorporate into their representation of an event and
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the subjective experience of simulating it” (p. 192). Specifically, FPP elicits bottom-up
processing of an event, whereby the event is defined by its concrete features, whereas TPP elicits
top-down processing of an event, whereby information outside of the focal event is incorporated
into the sensory experience (Libby & Eibach, 2011a). This occurs in part because, relative to
FPP, TPP induces people to construe actions at a higher level (Libby, Shaeffer, & Eibach, 2009;
Shaeffer, Libby, & Eibach, 2015). Several studies support this assertion. For example,
visualizing an upcoming task from the TPP tempers optimistic completion time estimates relative
to FPP by focusing people on both the steps to complete the task as well as obstacles to timely
completion (Buehler, Griffin, Lam, & Deslauriers, 2012). Moreover, this line of work found that
feelings of motivation were dampened when people imagined themselves completing the task in
TPP rather than FPP. In addition, visualizing the consumption of tempting but unhealthy food
from a FPP results in imagery that is higher in sensory detail than does the TPP, and therefore
higher value placed on the food and higher future food consumption (Christian, Miles, Kenyeri,
Mattschey, and Macrae, 2016). Christian et al. (2016) contend that this is because, relative to the
TPP, the FPP highlights the concrete details of the food being imagined, increasing its
desirability.

These differences in information processing influence the subjective experience of the
visualization. The focus on concrete details elicited by FPP makes people feel like they are
experiencing the event, whereas TPP tends to highlight the broader meaning of the event to the
self-concept (Libby & Eibach, 2011a). This effect has been shown in a variety of contexts. In
studies of self-change for example, people who feel that they have changed over time are more
likely to visualize their past selves from a TPP than from a FPP (Libby & Eibach, 2002; Libby &
Eibach, 2011b), and visualizing a past self from TPP increases reports of self-change compared
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with FPP (Libby, Eibach, & Gilovich, 2005). This occurs because imagining an inconsistent past
self focuses people on its coherence with the self-concept, thus activating the TPP (Libby &
Eibach, 2011b). Relative to the FPP, use of the TPP has also been shown to lead to a stronger
pro-voting mindset and therefore more voting behaviour (Libby, Shaeffer, Eibach, & Slemmer,
2007), to increase achievement motivation (Vasquez & Buehler, 2007), and to increase purchase
motivation and intentions for purchases of items relevant to the self-concept (Soliman, Buehler,
& Peetz, 2017). Finally, Marigold, Eibach, Libby, Ross, and Holmes (2015) have found that
people high in attachment anxiety report lower relationship quality after visualizing a
relationship transgression from the TPP compared with the FPP. This is consistent with the
notion that TPP highlights the meaning of the visualized event to the broader self-concept, as
people high in attachment anxiety tend to have a lower quality global view of their relationships
(Marigold et al., 2015).

What are the implications of these differences in information processing, and the
subjective experience of imagery, for affect? Holmes and Mathews (2010) review literature that
provides evidence that mental imagery evokes emotion, even in a more powerful way than verbal
representations of events. This suggests a powerful connection between mental imagery and
emotion. Furthermore, the effects of visual perspective on information processing suggest there
may be a relationship between imagery perspective and affect. Notably, however, Libby and
Eibach (2011a) theorize that one perspective will not consistently make emotions feel more
intense than the other. Rather, the effect of perspective on emotional intensity depends on
whether the emotional experience is driven more by the concrete features of the event, or by its
broader meaning to the self. In the former circumstance, FPP should heighten emotional
intensity. In the latter, TPP should intensify the affective experience. This assertion has been
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supported in a variety of contexts. Libby, Valenti, Pfent, and Eibach (2011) have provided
evidence that people with low self-esteem feel more shame when visualizing a failure from a
TPP than from a FPP, and that this effect is opposite for people with high self-esteem.
Visualizing a past regrettable inaction elicits stronger current feelings of regret when adopting a
TPP than a FPP, presumably because inaction feels most painful when considering the effects of
the potential missed opportunity to one’s life as a whole (Valenti, Libby, & Eibach, 2011).

Many of the studies linking emotion to imagery perspective have explored the emotions
felt while visualizing a negative event. I extend this literature to forecasted emotions relating to
future positive events. To my knowledge, only one previous study has tested effects of imagery
perspective on affective forecasting. In an unpublished thesis, Hines (2010) explored the
relationship between affective forecasting and imagery perspective by manipulating the
perspective from which students visualized receiving both a good grade and a bad grade on an
upcoming midterm. Students then predicted how they would feel upon receiving each grade, and
Hines (2010) later compared these forecasts with experienced affect. She expected that affective
forecasts would be more accurate when visualizing receiving the grade from the TPP relative to
the FPP, because our experiences are constantly affected by our self-theories, which are made
salient by the TPP. Results in this study were reported as difference scores, so the effect of
perspective on predicted affect is unclear. Hines (2010) found that the difference between
forecasted and actual affect was smaller for participants in the TPP condition than for those in
the FPP condition, supporting her hypothesis, for participants who received bad grades. This
same relationship was observed for participants who received good grades, but it was only
marginally significant. However, Hines’ (2010) study measured general levels of positive and
negative affect by asking participants how “good” or “bad” they thought each of the grades
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would make them feel. Research suggests, however, that there are distinct types of emotions that
differ from each other in a variety of ways (e.g., Ekman, 1999; Tracy & Robins, 2007), and I
examine how different types of emotions interact with visual perspective when predicting affect.
The Nature of Emotions

Many emotion researchers have classified emotions into two categories. The first set of
emotions, called “basic” or hedonic” emotions, are evolution-based in that they “evolved to deal
with fundamental life tasks” (Ekman, 1999, p. 48) and require little cognitive contribution to be
elicited (Hung & Mukhopadyay, 2011). Hedonic emotions include anger, fear, disgust, sadness,
happiness and surprise (Ekman, 1992). The second set of emotions, namely shame, guilt,
embarrassment, and pride, are referred to as self-conscious emotions (e.g., Tangney, 2003).
Tracy and Robins (2004) proposed a theoretical model suggesting that we feel self-conscious
emotions when an event occurs that is relevant to our self-concept and we attribute the cause of
that event to ourselves. In other words, the experience of self-conscious emotions requires self-
awareness and self-evaluation (Brown & Marshall, 2001; Tangney, 2003; Tracy & Robins,
2004). It has also been shown that self-conscious emotions arise due to our appraisals of how
others will evaluate us (Leary, 2007). Together, these theoretical viewpoints suggest that we feel
self-conscious emotions because self-relevant issues often have social implications, or that “self-
conscious emotions arise … from the perception that something about the self may have
implications for important social goals” (Baldwin & Baccus, 2004, p. 140).

If self-conscious emotions are elicited by self-relevant events, and if visualizing an event
from a TPP highlights the meaning of the event to the self-concept, then this suggests a
connection between visual perspective and the types of emotions elicited. Katzir and Eyal (2013)
provide evidence to support this connection by examining the effect of an immersive versus a
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self-distanced perspective on experienced emotions (anger and guilt in study 1; shame and
sadness in Study 2) when thinking about a past event. A key component of the self-distanced
perspective is that people adopt an observer perspective when reflecting on themselves. They
found that the self-distanced perspective reduced the intensity of basic emotions (anger and
sadness) relative to the self-immersive perspective, but it did not reduce the intensity of self-
conscious emotions (guilt and shame).
Hung and Mukhopadyay (2011) conducted three studies on the effect of imagery
perspective on hedonic vs. self-conscious felt emotions. Two of these studies employed a self-
control scenario, one hypothetical, the other recalled. The third study employed a hypothetical
scenario that was not a self-control dilemma, but was expected to induce positive hedonic
emotions and negative self-conscious emotions. In all studies, participants rated the intensity of a
variety of hedonic and self-conscious emotions that they felt during the visualization. In addition,
participants also described what they were focused on during the visualization. Across all three
studies, Hung and Mukhopadyay (2011) showed that imagining the scenario from a TPP (FPP)
increased the intensity of felt self-conscious (hedonic) emotions more than did imagining the
event from the FPP (TPP). Further, they found that participants in the FPP condition tended to
focus on the features of the scenario, whereas participants in the TPP condition tended to focus
on how others would evaluate them, and that these appraisals of the scenarios mediated the effect
of imagery perspective on felt emotions. This study provides convincing evidence of a link
between imagery perspective and the intensity of different types of emotions.

These studies concentrate on measuring felt emotions during mental simulation of either
past or hypothetical events, with Katzir and Eyal (2013) specifically examining negative
emotions. I extend this body of literature to predicted positive emotions related to expected
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future events. Research has shown that our affective forecasts are influenced by our current
emotional state (see Wilson & Gilbert (2003) for a review), suggesting that the effects observed
in these aforementioned studies should apply to affective forecasts. I would expect that
perspective will exert effects on forecasted emotions that are similar to those observed for felt
emotions, with overall forecasted emotions being stronger than felt emotions, given the
documented tendency to overestimate our emotional reactions (i.e., the impact bias).
Specifically, I postulate that if use of the TPP emphasizes the significance of an event to the self-
concept, then visualizing an anticipated future event from that perspective should intensify the
self-conscious emotions that the event is expected to elicit, more so than should visualizing it
from the FPP. Similarly, if use of the FPP makes salient the concrete details of an event, then
visualizing an anticipated future event from that perspective should intensify the hedonic
emotions that the event is expected to elicit, compared with use of the TPP. My hypothesis,
formally stated, is therefore:
H1: The perspective adopted while visualizing an anticipated positive event will have a
differential effect on the forecasts of self-conscious vs. hedonic emotions. Specifically:

H1A: People will predict stronger self-conscious emotions when they adopt a third-person (vs.
first-person) perspective.

H1B: People will predict stronger hedonic emotions when they adopt a first-person (vs. third-
person) perspective.

Study 1A

The objective of the first study was to examine the effect of visual perspective on
affective forecasts about a self-nominated, anticipated positive future event. Participants were
asked to nominate a positive event that they expected to occur within the next month, and that is
personally significant to them. They were then asked to imagine this event from either a FPP or a
TPP, and then to forecast several hedonic and self-conscious emotions. I expected that
IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

11
participants who visualized the event from the TPP would forecast stronger self-conscious
emotions than would participants who visualized the event from the FPP, but that the opposite
effect would occur for the prediction of hedonic emotions. Appendix A contains the
experimental materials used in Study 1A.
Method
Participants

Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and were
compensated with $1 USD for taking part in the study. Responses were collected from 139
participants. However, 35 responses were excluded as the participants exited the survey before
providing their affective forecasts, and 43 responses were excluded because participants
answered all of the survey questions without actually identifying an event.1 Therefore, I could
not be sure that they thoughtfully answered the questions.2 The final sample consisted of 61
participants (61% male) between the ages of 20 and 62 (M = 33.18, SD = 8.91).
Procedure

The experiment was administered online using QualtricsTM and used a 2 (visual
perspective: FPP vs. TPP) x 2 (emotion type: hedonic vs. self-conscious) mixed design. Visual
perspective was a between-subjects factor and participants were randomly assigned to
conditions. Emotion type was a within-subjects factor.
Participants were told that the study was about the types of events that people experience
in their lives, and their perceptions of those events. In this vein, they were asked to think about
one specific positive event or situation that they expected to actually take place within the next
month. They were also told that the event should be one that is personally significant to them.

1 The same criteria for excluding participants from the final sample were used in all studies in this paper.
2 Results of all primary analyses (manipulation checks, factor analyses, main hypothesis test, etc.) are qualitatively
similar when these 43 participants are included in the analysis.
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Participants then wrote a description of the event, and rated several characteristics of the event
on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = extremely). These characteristics were the positivity of the
event, the likelihood that the event will occur, the importance of the event to the participant, the
extent to which the participant can control whether or not the event occurs, and the similarity of
the event to past experiences. They were also asked in how many days they expected the event to
occur. These ratings were obtained for exploratory purposes, to include as possible moderators or
covariates in the analyses.
Next, participants were asked to take a moment and form a clear, visual image of
themselves actually engaging in the event. Participants assigned to the FPP condition were given
the following instructions:
Specifically, please try to picture yourself engaging in the event from a first person perspective.
From this point of view, you see events unfolding through your own eyes just as you would see
them if they were actually occurring. That is, you are looking out at your surroundings and
seeing only what would be visible to you as the event takes place (e.g., you see your
surroundings during the event).

Participants assigned to the TPP condition were given the following instructions:

Specifically, please try to picture yourself engaging in the event from an observer perspective
(third person perspective). From this point of view, you are able to ‘see yourself’ as well as your
surroundings, just as if you were an observer to the situation. That is, you are looking at yourself
and seeing what an observer would see as the event takes place (e.g., you see yourself standing in
your surroundings during the event).

Participants were held on the visualization screen for 45 seconds to encourage them to
spend time visualizing the event, rather than simply clicking to move on to the next screen. In
order to strengthen the manipulation, participants wrote about what they saw during their
visualization. As a manipulation check, participants were asked to what extent they saw their
engagement in the event through their own eyes or as an observer would. They replied to this
question on a 7-point scale anchored at 1 (through your own eyes) and 7 (through the eyes of an
IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING

13
observer), with the midpoint labeled “partially through your own eyes and partially through the
eyes of an observer”. Therefore, higher scores on this question indicate greater use of the TPP.
They were also asked to rate the extent to which they experienced feelings and emotions they
would experience when the event actually occurs (1 = not at all, 4 = moderately, 7 = very
clearly and vividly).
At this point participants completed the main dependent measures by generating affective
forecasts for the nominated event. They were presented, in random order, with six different
emotion items: happy, excited, joyful, proud, competent and self-worth. These items are similar
to the items used in other emotion studies (e.g., Richins, 1997; Giner-Sorolla, 2001; Ramanathan
& Williams, 2007) and include three hedonic emotion items (happy, excited, joyful) and three
self-conscious emotion items (proud, competent, self-worth).3 Participants indicated the degree
to which they expected to feel each emotion as the event is unfolding on a 7-point scale (1 = not
at all, 7 = extremely). As additional, supplementary measures, participants also indicated how
long after the event occurs they would still be experiencing the feelings of happiness, excitement,
and joy (hedonic emotions), and how long they would still be experiencing the feelings of pride,
self-competence, and self-worth (self-conscious emotions) (1 = only for a few seconds, 7 = for
days/weeks). Finally, participants completed the Behavior Identification Form (BIF) which
assesses individual differences in the level at which people identify actions (Vallacher &
Wegner, 1989). We included this measure to test the possibility that TPP would elicit a more
abstract level of construal in participants.4 Alternatively, the BIF could be conceptualized as a

3 Brown and Marshall (2001) found that the self-conscious emotion of pride is strongly related to self-esteem,
presumably because pride explicitly involves an evaluation of one’s self-worth. Therefore, ‘self-worth’ and
‘competent’ were chosen as self-conscious emotion items, along with ‘proud’.
4 BIF scores did not vary significantly across perspective condition, F(1,59) = .07, MSE = .69, p = .795.
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14
measure of chronic individual differences in construal that might moderate the impact of imagery
perspective. Participants were then thanked for their participation, debriefed, and compensated.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations (SDs) and zero order correlations for all
measures included in the study. Table 2 presents the means and SDs for each imagery
perspective condition.
Event Characteristics

As shown in Table 1, the events participants selected were rated as highly positive, likely
to occur, and important, suggesting that participants followed the instructions to select a positive,
significant event that they expect to occur. The events were also rated as highly controllable.
To confirm that these event characteristics, which were rated before the visual
perspective manipulation, did not differ across condition, each of the ratings was submitted to a
one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with perspective as the independent variable (see Table
2 for means). There were no significant differences across conditions.
Manipulation Check
A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), with participants’ self-reported visual
perspective as the dependent variable, and assigned perspective condition as the independent
variable, suggests that the imagery perspective manipulation was successful. Participants were
more likely to report using the TPP in the TPP condition (M = 5.79, SD = 1.45) than in the FPP
condition (M = 2.00, SD = 1.54), F(1, 59) = 96.51, MSE = 217.09, p < .001.5 5 Results of the main hypothesis test remain qualitatively similar if participants who failed the manipulation check (n = 4) are excluded from the analysis. Participants assigned to the FPP (TPP) condition failed the manipulation check if they reported 5 or higher (3 or lower) on the self-report visual perspective scale. IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING 15 Affective Forecasts I averaged participants’ affective forecasts for ‘happy’, ‘joyful’ and ‘excited’ to create a hedonic emotions index (α = .79, M = 6.10, SD = .87), and their affective forecasts for ‘proud’, ‘competent’ and ‘self-worth’ to create a self-conscious emotions index (α = .77, M = 5.82, SD = .89). To examine empirically whether the emotion items represented two distinct types I also performed a varimax-rotated, principal components factor analysis. The analysis identified only one factor with an eigenvalue exceeding one, and this factor explained 55.5% of the variance in the emotion measures. However, a second factor with an eigenvalue slightly less than one emerged. Therefore, I performed a second factor analysis with varimax rotation, forcing two factors. As expected, ‘proud’, ‘competent’ and ‘self-worth’ loaded significantly on the first factor, which explained 37.3% of the variance, while ‘happy’, ‘excited’ and ‘joyful’ loaded significantly on the second factor, which explained 33.4% of the variance. This pattern of results provides some limited evidence that the hedonic emotion items are measuring something distinct from the self-conscious emotion items. The small sample size may have impeded the second factor from emerging naturally during the first factor analysis. To test the two hypotheses, I submitted the emotion indices to a 2 x 2 mixed-model ANOVA with visual perspective (FPP vs. TPP) as a between-subjects factor and emotion-type (hedonic vs. self-conscious) as a within-subjects factor. According to my hypothesis, there should be an interaction between perspective and emotion-type. The ANOVA revealed a main effect of emotion-type, F(1, 59) = 7.11, MSE = 2.33, p = .010, in that participants expected to feel stronger hedonic emotions (M = 6.10, SD = .87) than self-conscious emotions (M = 5.82, SD = .89). However, there was no main effect of perspective condition, F(1, 59) = .001, MSE = .001, p = .982, and the hypothesized interaction between visual perspective and emotion type did not IMAGERY PERSPECTIVE AND AFFECTIVE FORECASTING 16 occur, F(1, 59) = .69, MSE = .28, p = .408.6 Examining the means of each type of emotion in each condition revealed that the pattern of results was directionally consistent with my predictions. Participants forecasted slightly stronger self-conscious emotions in the TPP condition (M = 5.87, SD = .84) than in the FPP condition (M = 5.78, SD = .94), and they forecasted slightly stronger hedonic emotions in the FPP condition (M = 6.14, SD = .80) than in the TPP condition (M = 6.06, SD = .95). However, these differences were not significant.7 Supplementary Analyses Pride and Joy. For exploratory purposes, I conducted follow-up analyses that examined the effect of imagery perspective on each individual emotion item (see Table 2 for means). I was particularly interested in the items of pride and joy because, in hindsight, it seemed these were the two items that best represented the two emotion types. As indicated above, theory on emotions suggests six basic (or hedonic) emotions of anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness and surprise (Ekman, 1992), and four self-conscious emotions of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride (e.g., Tangney, 2003). Joy and pride may be the items that best match these typologies whereas the fit of other items is arguably less clear.8 Therefore, I tested my hypotheses again using only the hedonic emotion of joy and the self-conscious emotion of pride. That is, I submitted these two emotion items to a 2 x 2 mixed-model ANOVA with visual perspective (FPP vs. TPP) as a between-subjects factor and emotion-type (joy vs. pride) as a within-subjects 6 As the self-conscious and hedonic emotions were highly correlated, I also tested my hypothesis using one emotion as the dependent variable while controlling for the other. That is, I used an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with self-conscious emotions as the dependent variable, perspective condition as the independent variable, and hedonic emotions as a covariate. There was no significant main effect of perspective condition, F(1, 58) = .55, MSE = .30, p = .461, therefore my hypothesis was not supported. 7 As an internal check on the effect of visual perspective on forecasted affect, I regressed self-conscious emotions on participants’ self-reported visual perspective (a continuous variable) and hedonic emotions, expecting a significant regression coefficient on the self-report variable if my hypothesis was supported. This predicted relationship was not observed, β = .04, SE = .04, p = .283. 8 Joy is a synonym for happiness and was used as a proxy for hedonic emotions by Hung and Mukhopadyay (2011), therefore I selected joy instead of happiness for this analysis.