P. Totterdell et al., FORECASTING FEELINGS - THE ACCURACY AND EFFECTS OF SELF-PREDICTIONS OF MOOD, Journal of social behavior and personality, 12(3), 1997, pp. 631-650
This study investigated whether people cart predict their own moods an
d whether mood predictions affect current and subsequent moods. Thirty
participants completed a set of self-ratings of predicted moods at th
e start of each day and each week, and of actual moods and hassles at
the end of each day for two weeks. Pooled time-series analysis showed
that the participants' predictions were reliably associated with their
subsequent moods. However their predictions explained less than 10% o
f the variance in daily mood and there were large individual differenc
es in accuracy. Mood was more likely to improve when participants expe
cted it to improve, even after controlling for hassles. Current mood h
ad a greater association with predicted mood than retrospective mood,
and with subsequent hassles than previous hassles. The results suggest
that self-predictions of mood may initiate processes that regulate an
d improve people's subsequent moods.