Sam Johnson

But I think what the research is really showing is less about what are the kind of negative consequences

consequences in the moment, but more about the way that shapes the decisions that we make about the future.

Yeah, so two main things that we found.

So the first thing has to do with risk, and the second thing has to do with time.

So the thing to do with risk is that people vary in the extent to which dread is a more powerful emotion than savoring.

Savoring is kind of the opposite, where you are looking forward to things that can happen, to positive things that can happen in the future.

For some people, dread is just a much more powerful emotion than savoring.

And for those people, they tend to avoid taking risks where the risk is something that they'd have to take

A decision that I have to make now about something that's going to happen in the future.

So the risk could be resolved in the future.

Yeah, so if you think about the type of person who is really focused on financial risks, those types of people might be very unlikely to start businesses, for example, because it's the type of thing where it's going to be potentially months or years before you find out what the outcome is going to be.

And when you're kind of ruminating or focusing on those sorts of negative emotions about the present, then it makes you think, okay, maybe this risk isn't something that I want to take.

Whereas people who have a more balanced attitude where they think, okay, there's some positive things that might happen from starting this business.

There's also some negative things.

Those people are more willing to take calculated risks.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that it is true that people who are particularly prone to dread are likely to miss out on some of those opportunities.

Yeah, that's the first thing.

The second thing is that people who are more prone to dread also tend to be more impatient.

So if you imagine you needed to have some sort of painful dental procedure, say.