Mood Disorder Symptom Severity Is Associated with Greater Affective Forecasting Error

Several theories suggest that mood disorders, like depression and anxiety, involve relatively systematic biases in how one imagines and predicts their future feelings. Here, we examine whether affective forecasting errors for mildly evocative, everyday emotional events are associated with differences in depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity in a non-clinical sample drawn from the general population. Participants read descriptions of 20 affective pictures which varied in terms of their normative valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and arousal (activation/deactivation). Based on the provided descriptions, participants rated their predicted emotional reaction to each picture. One week later, rated their experienced emotion in response to viewing each picture. Depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom severity were assessed using self-report questionnaires. Results revealed that those with greater anxiety or depression symptom severity, but not greater somatic symptom severity, had increased error in predicting their negative emotions for normatively positive future events (e.g., viewing pictures of stereotypically pleasant animals). Supplemental analyses revealed that individuals with greater depression symptom severity tended to over-predict their future negative feelings, while individuals with greater anxiety symptom severity made more errors in general (i.e., they both over- and under-predicted future negative emotions). These findings suggest that biases in predicting one’s future affective feelings, particularly one’s future negative feelings, may play a role in mood disorder symptom severity, and highlight potential differences in how emotional predictions may be biased for those with greater depression and/or anxiety symptomology.