Abstract
Guided by Hsee & Zang(2004)'s argument that the misprediction of happiness contributes to the occurrence of the distinction bias, two studies were conducted to examine the effect of forecasting happiness and regret on choices as a function of quantitative attribute of two alternatives. Experiment 1 revealed that the quantitative attributes of alternatives determined the degree of predicted happiness in the single evaluation condition, but not in the joint evaluation condition, whereas the degree of predicted regret was influenced by the quantitative attributes both in the single and joint evaluation conditions. Experiment 2 indicated the participants made a choice based on the quantitative attributes only when predicting happiness in joint evaluation. These results suggest that the kind of forecasted affect influences the occurrence of the distinction bias.
