Contrary to the ‘end of history illusion’, in a longitudinal sample of American adults Harris and Busseri (2019) found that most individuals were accurate or expected too much change in their future life satisfaction, rather than expecting too little change. Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2020) suggested that the discrepancy in conclusions arose because we focused on mean-level trends rather than individual differences. Here we clarify that the discrepancy stems from the analysis of directional versus absolute change, with the latter preferred by Quoidbach et al. (2020). Both approaches are informative. Indeed, in addition to determining whether the altitude of an elevator in a skyscraper is changing over time, it matters very much whether the elevator is going up or down.

与``历史幻觉的终结''相反，在美国成年人的纵向样本中，哈里斯和布塞里（Harris and Busseri，2019）发现，大多数人是准确的或期望他们对未来生活满意度的改变太多，而不是期望改变得太少。Quoidbach，Gilbert和Wilson（2020）指出，由于我们关注均值水平趋势而不是个人差异，因此出现了结论上的差异。在这里，我们澄清了差异是由于分析了方向变化与绝对变化之间的关系，Quoidbach等人更喜欢后者。（2020）。两种方法都是有益的。实际上，除了确定摩天大楼中电梯的高度是否随时间而变化之外，电梯是上升还是下降都非常重要。