Moving Toward a Brighter Future: The Effects of Desire on Judgments About the Likelihood of Future Events

People generally judge that the future will be consistent with their desires, in that they will experience desirable events and will not experience undesirable events. This desirability bias has been presumed to result from the desirability of the future events, but exactly how "desire" is represented psychologically has been largely undefined and untested. This investigation explored the contributions of positive/negative affective reactions and motivations to approach/avoid to the creation of desirability bias. In 4 studies, participants judged a future event to be more likely to occur if it had been paired with positive stimuli compared with negative stimuli. This desirability bias was eliminated when motivational tendencies were evoked that contradicted affective reactions (i.e., avoidance motivation for positive reactions, approach motivation for negative reactions; Study 1), and the impact of affective reactions on this desirability bias was partially mediated by behavioral indicators of motivations to approach or avoid events (Study 2). Desirability bias was also eliminated when participants acted to fulfill their approach/avoidance motivations before making their judgments (Study 3) and was present when motivation to approach/avoid was manipulated independently of affective reactions (Study 4). Together, these findings suggest a primary role for motivations in desirability bias, and that desire is best captured by motivations to approach or avoid stimuli.