Lay intuitions about overall evaluations of experiences

Previous research has identified important determinants of overall evaluations for experiences lived across time. By means of a novel guessing task, I study what decision-makers themselves consider important. As Informants, some participants live and evaluate an experience. As Guessers, others have to infer its overall evaluation by asking Informants questions. I rewarded accurate inferences, and analyzed and classified the questions in four experiments involving auditory, gustatory and viewing experiences. Results show that Guessers thought of overall evaluations as reflecting average momentary impressions. Moreover and alternatively, they tended to consider the personality and attitudes of the experiencing person, experience-specific holistic judgments and behavioral intentions regarding the experience. Thus, according to lay intuitions, overall evaluations are more than a reflection of the experience’s momentary impressions.