In psychology, prospection is the generation and evaluation of mental representations of possible futures. The term therefore captures a wide array of future-oriented psychological phenomena, including the prediction of future emotion (affective forecasting), the imagination of future scenarios (episodic foresight), and planning. Prospection is central to various aspects of human cognition and motivation. Daniel Gilbert (psychologist) and Timothy Wilson coined the term in 2007. It has since become a central area of enquiry in the cognitive sciences.
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Prospection in the context of Foresight (psychology)
Foresight is the ability to predict, or the action of predicting, what will happen or what is needed in the future. Studies suggest that much of human thought is directed towards potential future events. Because of this, the nature and evolution of foresight is an important topic in psychology. Thinking about the future is studied under the label prospection.
Neuroscientific, developmental, and cognitive studies have identified many similarities to the human ability to recall past episodes. Science magazine selected evidence for such similarities as one of the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007. However, fundamental differences separate mentally travelling through time into the future (i.e., foresight) versus mentally travelling through time into the past (i.e., episodic memory).
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