Though it is well-understood that beliefs about future emotions (affective forecasting) influence decision-making, less is known about where these forecasts come from. Here, we investigate how intuitive theories of cognition (cognitive forecasting) influence affective forecasts and, consequently, risk preferences. We found that forecasts of cognitive states—expectations, attention, and information-seeking—are linked to affective forecasts and risk preferences (Study 1). There was great diversity in people's intuitive theories of cognition: One subgroup associated attention and information-seeking with positive emotions for optimists but negative emotions for pessimists, and therefore predicted greater risk-seeking in optimists but not pessimists; the other large subgroup consistently perceived forecasted attention and information-seeking as affectively negative (Studies 2a-b). These results connect behavioral economics and cognitive science by exploring how metacognitive intuitions influence our preferences.

We identify amino acid variants within dominant SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes by interrogating global sequence data. Several variants within nucleocapsid and ORF3a epitopes have arisen independently in multiple lineages and result in loss of recognition by epitope-specific T cells assessed by IFN-γ and cytotoxic killing assays. Complete loss of T cell responsiveness was seen due to Q213K in the A∗01:01-restricted CD8+ ORF3a epitope FTSDYYQLY_207-215; due to P13L, P13S, and P13T in the B∗27:05-restricted CD8+ nucleocapsid epitope QRNAPRITF_9-17; and due to T362I and P365S in the A∗03:01/A∗11:01-restricted CD8+ nucleocapsid epitope KTFPPTEPK_361-369. CD8+ T cell lines unable to recognize variant epitopes have diverse T cell receptor repertoires. These data demonstrate the potential for T cell evasion and highlight the need for ongoing surveillance for variants capable of escaping T cell as well as humoral immunity.