Originally posted by the PON Staff at the Program on Negotiation Daily Blog.

Adapted from the Negotiation newsletter.

Imagine an upcoming negotiation. How will you respond if your opponent seems bent on provoking an argument? If you’re like most people, you’ll have difficulty predicting your precise response. Professor Dan Gilbert of Harvard University found that when asked how a positive or negative event will affect their happiness, people accurately predict the direction of their mood but dramatically overestimate the degree of change. In other words, most of us correctly expect that a trip to Europe will make us happy, but we overestimate the degree of happiness it will bring us.

Read the full article [here].