Michel Tuan Pham

Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect

Coauthor(s): Leonard Lee, Andrew T. Stephen.

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Abstract:
Seven studies show that compared to people with lower trust in their feelings, those with higher trust in their feelings were better able to predict the outcome of a wide variety of future events, including (a) future movie successes, (b) the 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential nominee, (c) the winner of American Idol, (d) movements of the Dow Jones Index, and even (e) the weather. The superiority of predictions under high trust in feelings held both when people were experimentally induced to trust or not trust their feelings and when people's chronic tendency to trust or not trust their feelings was simply measured. It further appears that it is high trust in feelings that improves prediction accuracy rather than low trust in feelings that impairs it.

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