Dispositional Happiness and Affective Forecasting about Academic Performance: General or Specific Effect?

Recent findings suggest that dispositional traits can influence personal affective forecasting. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between dispositional happiness and affective prediction about academic performance among undergraduate students. Participants were asked to predict their emotional reactions on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very bad) to 7 (very good), two months before they will obtain their results for one examination. All the participants were contacted by SMS the day when the results were available, and were requested to rate their present affective state on the same scale. According to their scores on the Subjective Happiness Scale, participants were assigned into “happy” and “unhappy” groups. Results show no emotional prediction differences between the two groups for extreme (i.e., very good and bad) results (upper than 8/10, and below 4/10). In contrast, happy participants predict less negative emotional state that unhappy ones for middle results (between 5/10 and 7/10). Moreover, no differences appear for the emotional state assessed the day when they received their performances. These findings confirm that dispositional happiness is related to emotional prediction, and more particularly indicate that happiness induces more positive feelings concerning moderate future achievements, but not for extreme ones. This study suggests that happiness induces a positive view about emotional coping of future intermediate accomplishments only and not a general positive view of future.