Impact bias

Biological Parallel

A gazelle that escapes a lion experiences peak cortisol during the chase, but within hours hormone levels normalize and feeding resumes—prolonged stress would be maladaptive, wasting energy on past threats. Animals evolved rapid emotional recovery because survival requires shifting quickly between threat response and resource acquisition. Impact bias—overestimating how long events will affect our emotions—stems from this asymmetry: anticipated emotion must be intense to motivate threat avoidance, but actual emotional duration evolved to be brief. We predict lasting devastation to ensure caution, then recover faster than predicted because baseline restoration is fitness-critical.