How good are people at anticipating their own emotions? We try to avoid making decisions that we might regret afterward. This strategy rests on a prediction about the future. It's relevant, therefore, that people are often inaccurate in forecasting their future regrets and tend to overestimate how much they'll later regret their errors. As a result, people probably give more weight to "regret avoidance" than they should. Imagine that you are choosing between two apartments that you might rent for next year. One is cheaper and larger but faces a noisy street.
Several studeis suggests that people are rather inept at making this sort of precitions; in particular, people tend to underestimate the likelihood that they'll simply get used to new possiessions or new features in their environment.  For the negative events, people are often convinced that things that bother them now will continue to bother hem in the future. For positive events, people seem to assume that things that please them will now continue to bring pleasure in the future.