Abstract: Affective forecasting refers to the prediction of one’s emotional state in the future. This kind of prediction is affected by various kinds of cognitive biases, i.e. immune neglect, focalism and empathy gap. This article integrated the causes of these cognitive biases from the point of view of cognitive-experiential self theory and mental simulation, introduced individual differences and interventions of affective forecasting biases. In the end, the possible trends for the future research focus on psychology-behavior mechanism, evolutionary and brain mechanism of affective forecasting.

Key words: affective forecasting, bias, cognitive–experiential self theory, mental simulation