Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

What To Do On Spring Break? The Role Of Predicted, On-Line, And Remembered Experience In Future Choice, Derrick Wirtz, Justin Kruger, Christie N. Scollon, Ed Diener

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

When individuals choose future activities on the basis of their past experiences, what guides those choices? The present study compared students' predicted, on-line, and remembered spring-break experiences, as well as the influence of these factors on students' desire to take a similar vacation in the future. Predicted and remembered experiences were both more positive—and, paradoxically, more negative—than on-line experiences. Of key importance, path analyses revealed that remembered experience, but neither on-line nor anticipated experience, directly predicted the desire to repeat the experience. These results suggest that although on-line measures may be superior to retrospective measures for approximating objective experience, retrospective …