Emotional forecasting??

[sandi]

What is emotional forecasting?? Never heard off it until i read the assesors report??

[Felicity Wishes]

It is a cognitive bias that I don't think we need to know.

[Limista]

Well if it was in the Short Answer or Extended Response section of the paper, it would probably fine-tune your points a little.

It's to do with the transactional model, where emotional forecasting in the primary appraisal stage involves the individual predicting the potential emotional impact of a given situation. In secondary appraisal, emotional forecasting used to predict the potential emotional impact of a coping strategy to deal with the stressor.

So suppose you see a spider on the window sill for example. Obviously, the sight of the spider involves the recognition of a potential stressor (primary appraisal) where you, for argument's sake, assess the situation to be stressful and then you engage in further appraisals that involve you posing it as a threat (you NOW consider the possible emotional impact of the situation ...e.g. "if it moves any closer to me I won't be able to breathe, I'll be so scared, I'll get goosebumps!!" etc.). If we now skip to the secondary appraisal stage of your psychological thinking, you would consider the potential emotional impact of a possible coping strategy (e.g. "if I complain to my mum about it/vent emotions then I'm probably not going to be as frightened because I do not have to get rid of the spider on my own").

It's a small thing really, so don't stress too much about it.