Your Current State Distorts Your Future Predictions
"Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry."
— Common wisdom, explained by Loewenstein, O'Donoghue & Rabin (2003)
Right now, you're in a certain state — hungry or full, hot or cold, happy or sad. When you try to predict what you'll want or feel in the future, you project your current state onto that prediction.
If you're hungry, you overestimate how much food you'll want later. If you're cold, you underestimate how much you'll want that convertible in summer. Researchers call this projection bias.
The effect is powerful: hungry shoppers buy different foods than satisfied shoppers, and their purchases match what someone who expects to be permanently famished would buy. Your current self hijacks your future self's decisions.
Predicted hunger level
Predicted hunger level
Loewenstein et al. (2003) found that hungry participants predicted they'd want nearly twice as much food for a future delivery compared to satisfied participants — even though the future delivery was a week away when both groups would presumably be equally hungry.
Return rates for items bought in cold weather are 0.57 percentage points higher when bought on a day 30°F colder than the return day — projection bias at work.
Projection bias was formally identified by economists George Loewenstein, Ted O'Donoghue, and Matthew Rabin in 2003. They showed that people systematically underestimate how much their preferences will change when their state changes.
Loewenstein's framework distinguishes between "hot" states (hunger, anger, pain, arousal) and "cold" states (satisfied, calm, comfortable). When in a hot state, we can't imagine feeling cold, and vice versa. This creates an empathy gap — with our own future selves.
Hungry shoppers buy 31% more calories than satisfied shoppers. They project their current hunger onto future meals.
Cold-weather purchases of convertibles and air conditioners are returned more often — the buyer couldn't imagine summer.
Young people underestimate retirement needs — they project current health and earning power onto their 70-year-old selves.
Motivated January signups overestimate future motivation. 80% of gym members stop going by February.
The mechanism appears to be anchoring and adjustment. We anchor on our current state and then insufficiently adjust for how different the future will be. Our current visceral state is so immediate and vivid that it dominates our imagination of the future.
You order dinner when hungry, but by the time it arrives you're less hungry. Result: overeating or wasted food.
Couples with small children buy big houses. When kids leave, the house feels too large — they couldn't project to empty-nest selves.
At home, you imagine needing 10 outfits. On the trip, you wear 3 and curse the heavy suitcase.
When healthy, people say they'd want aggressive treatment if terminally ill. Actually ill patients often want comfort care instead.
"People exaggerate the degree to which their future tastes will resemble their current tastes."
— Loewenstein, O'Donoghue & Rabin, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2003)