Question

*****MINIMUM 300 WORDS

Purpose: Discuss affective forecasting using concrete examples from student experience. 1. Describe an example of impact bias from your own “affective forecasting” experience. That is, a case in which you believed that a certain event would lead to a strong positive or negative emotion, and then when the event actually happened you found it wasn’t so good or bad as you had thought. 2. Why was your prediction about the emotional impact of the event so wrong? What do you think happened? 3. Which of the following concepts help explain why your prediction was inaccurate: focalism, the focusing illusion, immune neglect, isolation effect? Do you think there other reasons for the impact bias that are not covered by these concepts?

Answer 1

Affecting forecast refers to one’s prediction of one’s emotional state in the future and most of the time it might change. Once during my school days, I didn’t perform well in my exam which was one of my favourite subjects. I was very confident even without preparation thus ending up with hanging out with friends, playing. My father kept telling me, just because it’s your favourite subject do not mean that you shouldn’t prepare for the exam. If you are going to be over confident about it by not preparing for it, you are going to regret it but I just ignored him. When the results came I was shocked to find myself in an awkward situation because I failed in my favourite subject. I felt very scared that my father would punish me. I didn’t sleep or eat well for few days.

My prediction changed and I felt relieved when my father came to me after three days and sat nearby me. He told that something is terribly wrong with you, what’s bothering you? Tears swelled out of my eyes and I said, sorry for not listening to him thus failing in the subject. He said that’s alright because everyone fails in their lives in different situations but it’s the ability to correct one’s mistakes that will take them to heights.

Focalism refers to one’s tendency to become much worried about the future impact of that information thus worrying or overjoying, Immune neglect is the tendency to look or think of the negative impacts of events by overestimating them and start to distress oneself thus preventing oneself from approaching issues positively thus leading them to make poor decisions and Isolation effect suggests that when multiple stimuli are present at the same time people choose and remember the one different from others. I think in my case it was focalism that affected my emotions. I think one’s personality and parenting may affect their personality thus affecting the way they look at future events and related emotions.