Missing Amplification Effect: Focusing Missing Leads to Low Happiness Experience

Abstract

Prospect theory study found that people’s perception of the loss was greater than the strength obtained (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), and the cognitive processes of “priority processing trend of negative events” thought that negative events would be priority processing than positive events (Huang & Luo, 2009). Researchers infer that when people focus on the lack of real life, it will produce the missing amplification effect, and this will further affect people’s well-being experiences. We used three experiments to test our hypotheses. Experiment 1 was between subjects design, and found that focusing missing was widespread, in addition, focusing missing and happy experience were negative correlation; Experiment 2 was picture experiment, and found that “missing amplification effect” existed. The greater the missing amplified effect, the lower the happiness; Experiment 3 merged experiment 1 and experiment 2, And found that the intermediary role between focusing missing and happy experience. Through the above three experiments, we concluded that: focusing missing leaded low happy experience, and missing amplification effect was the psychological mechanisms to explain why the focusing missing leaded to the low happy experience.