Well, it's over. Happy now? Or are you crushed?

If your candidate won, you're probably elated. Triumphant. Feeling transcendent joy beyond the ability of human language to express.

If he lost, you may feel that the world has ended but no one noticed. Deep despair. Certainty that terrible things will happen very, very soon. In one AOL poll taken about a week before the election, 58 percent said if their guy lost they'd be "devastated."

Not even close to being true, say happiness experts. A month from now you'll hardly notice, they say. Winners may find that the angels have stopped singing; losers that the demons never materialized.

"People tend to overestimate both the intensity and the duration of their emotional responses to events like elections," says Elizabeth W. Dunn, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

What's Focalism?

One reason is "focalism." "When we imagine an event, we imagine it in sharp relief, but even if your candidate wins, your life won't revolve around him," says Dunn.

Another reason is "immune neglect." We have a kind of psychological immune system—our minds protect us from things that make us feel bad. "We're really good at making the best of a bad situation, but we don't always recognize that ability," Dunn says. "If my candidate loses, for example, I'll probably stop reading the newspaper for a few days."

"People tend to underestimate how resilient they are," says Gretchen Rubin, whose blog The Happiness Project explores her personal attempt to put happiness theories to the test. "We come to grips with things faster than we think. And little things matter much more to your happiness than you think. The president's important, but in terms of shaping everyday experience, having a really good coffee shop that you go to every day probably matters more."

Happiness experts have put that election theory to the test. In 1994, a guy named George W. Bush defeated Ann Richards for governor of Texas. Before the election, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin asked voters how happy or unhappy they thought they'd be afterwards. A month later, winners were about as happy but losers were significantly happier than they expected. "We tend to idealize our candidates and demonize the opponent," says Dunn. "But afterwards you may begin to recognize the strength of the other candidate."

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