But a major surprise from the Fed? That would be surprising.

All of which is to say that we don’t know what will happen if and when the Fed raises rates. And the problem becomes much more complicated when you include human psychology in your economic analysis, as we try to do in the emerging field of behavioral finance. In fact, from a psychological perspective, the whole efficient markets idea that only real surprises matter and there should be no reaction to “news” that is well known in advance is a little off base. People often don’t know in advance how they will react until news becomes real.

The psychologists Eldar Shafir and Amos Tversky in 1992 called this phenomenon nonconsequentialist reasoning, by which they meant that we often just can’t discipline ourselves to think through the likely consequences of possible events, so instead just let ourselves be buffeted by news as it happens. This suggests that an interest rate rise might not be boring at all: We will have to wait and see.

After all, with rates this low, some people may have been engaging in behavior that isn’t entirely rational and that has a basis in well-documented wishful-thinking bias. As Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, said in her Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress last July: “The committee recognizes that low interest rates may provide incentives for some investors to ‘reach for yield,’ and those actions could increase vulnerabilities in the financial system to adverse events.”

Reaching for yield — taking actions without fully considering risk, to try to earn greater returns than are found in traditional safe investments — may be a form of wishful thinking known as exaggerated expectation, which has been studied in many areas of life. For example, the psychologist Elisha Babad showed that sports fans often have exaggerated expectations for their teams, much as voters exaggerate the probability that their preferred candidate will win.

In the near zero-interest-rate environment of recent years, people have naturally searched for alternative investments, and that may have led them into wishful thinking. People might be viewing high prices in the stock and housing markets as evidence of the inherent worth of these assets, disregarding the role that low interest rates have played in bolstering those prices. Some people have undoubtedly taken personal pleasure in their investing success, interpreting it as proof of their own self-worth. Identity and ego may be an issue, and that can be very dangerous.

People may have strong reactions when their identity is connected to things that turn out to be disappointing, after the initial reason for their excitement is gone. After the financial crisis in 2008, for example, many highfliers found that their identities as smart stock pickers or home buyers were severely challenged. It could happen again. But I’m afraid we will just have to wait and see.