Word: predictabilities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...figure out whether you'll like the restaurant around the corner or that new guy in accounting or a vacation in Madrid, or just about anything else you've never personally experienced, try asking a stranger who has. That person is more likely to predict - more accurately than you - your future reaction, according to a new study published in the March 20 issue of Science...
...Indeed, Gilbert and his co-authors cite previous research showing people's scant ability to predict their future feelings about most things: "people have been shown to overestimate how unhappy they will be after receiving bad test results, becoming disabled or being denied a promotion, and to overestimate how happy they will be after winning a prize, initiating a romantic relationship or taking revenge against those who have harmed them...
...such is the resistance to this proposition - people like to think of themselves as unique, self-aware individuals who can predict their own responses - that even after being shown how muddleheaded their own predictions tend to be, people still prefer to rely on them rather than seeking advice from others, Gilbert's study found...
...default-swap indexes suggest. For example, a recent reading of the ABX index puts the value of even the highest-rated subprime mortgage bonds created in 2007 at only 27% of their precrunch prices. Yes, Americans are behind on their mortgages, but even the most pessimistic prognostications do not predict that 73% of home loans will become worthless. (See pictures of the dangers of printing money...
Economists and public officials need to be optimistic about the economy. It they are too dour, they just encourage the public to think that they should be replaced. Economists, after all, might be considered a luxury in a down economy. Politicians who predict only hopelessness may be seen as ineffective stewards of their country's finances...