Affective forecasting

The Psychological Immune System is a set of distorting cognitive mechanisms that provide protection prior to experience strong negative emotions. The function of the immune system is based on the Lists, transforming, and constructing information to increase the tolerability of the status quo and let the unattractive alternatives appear as they really are. The immune system operates almost entirely unconsciously. The term was coined by psychologist Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson by using the biological immune system as a metaphor.

Mechanisms

The mechanisms of the psychological immune system include:

• Defense mechanism
• Rationalization
• Reduction of cognitive dissonance
• Increased emotional response to stimuli (hot cognition )
• Useful self- distortion
• Effort to preserve their own integrity ( self- affirmation )
• Reducing the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing facts and arguments ( self- deception )
• Culture as a shield before death ( terror management)
• Memories of unpleasant events are quickly forgotten (fading affect, bias)

Affective forecasting

The psychological immune system leads to a reduction of the precision of predictions about their own emotional states. So people overrate the effect of a future negative event, such as death of a close person or unemployment.