The citation is: Riis, J., Lowenstein, G., Baron, J., Jepson, C., Fagerlin, A., & Ubel, P.A. (2005), Ignorance of Hedonic Adaptation to Hemodialysis: A study Using Ecological Momentary Assessment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134, 3-9
>An article was just published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:
>General by Jason Riis and colleagues (2005) that reviews how people are
>terrible predictors of their own changing health status, assuming they would
>have lower life satisfication in the event of disability for example when in
>fact this is not the case. This has some serious implications for
>developing advance directives based on what we *think* we might want without
>realizing how we will respond/adapt when (not if) our health status changes
>from its present state. The article is called: "Ignorance of Hedonic
>Adaptation to Hemodialysis: A study Using Ecological Momentary Assessment."
>Here's the abstract:
>
>Heathly people generally underestimate the self-reported well-being of
>people with disabilities and serious illnesses. The cause of this
>discrepancy is in dispute, and the present study provides evidence for 2
>causes. First, healthy people fail to anticipate hedonic adaptation to poor
>health. Using and ecological momentary assessment measure of mood, the
>authors failed to find evidence that hemodialysis patients are less happy
>than healthy nonpatients are, suggesting that they have largely, if not
>completely, adapted to their condition. In a forecasting task, healthy
>people failed to anticipate this adaptation. Second, although controls
>underestated their own mood in both an estimation task and a recall task,
>patients were quite accurate in both tasks. This relative negativity in
>controls' estimates of their own moods could also contribute to their
>underestimation of the moods and overall well-being of patients.
>
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