The Effect Of Content Relevance Of Negative Episodic Future Thinking On Intertemporal Decision Making

A man without distant care must have near sorrow.In our daily thoughts about the future,we imagine not only positive but also negative future scenarios.Imagination about the future self is an important factor in intertemporal decision-making,which can be thought as the conflict between the selves at different points in time.However,previous studies mainly focused on the intervention effect of positive episodic future thinking on intertemporal decision making,while few studies have focused on the impact of negative episodic future thinking on intertemporal choice,and the conclusions of existing studies were inconsistent.The present study identifies an important variable which may have led to these inconsistent conclusions,namely the content relevance between negative future thinking and decision content.In the first experiment,we asked college students to make intertemporal choices after imagining negative future scenarios that might really happen in their daily life,and preliminarily revealed the relationship between the content relevance of negative episodic future thinking and intertemporal choice preference.The results showed that content relevance of negative episodic future thinking had a significant impact on the intertemporal choice,that is,participants’ delay discount rate was lower when the content of imagination was highly correlated with decision content.At the same time,different levels of content relevance also led to inconsistent changes in intertemporal choice preferences.That is,after imagining negative future scenarios with high correlation with decision content,participants’ discount rate was significantly decreased,becoming more far-sighted,but after imagining negative future scenarios with low correlation with decision content,participants’ discount rate was significantly increased,becoming more short-sighted.In study 2,we used a different paradigm for intertemporal monetary choice,and measured participants’ perception of waiting time and their score on defensive pessimism.The results showed that the content relevance of negative episodic future thinking could negatively predicted the perceived length of delayed time,which then negatively predicted the intertemporal choice preference for larger and later reward,and the perceived length of delayed time mediated the relationship between content relevance and intertemporal choice preference.The test of moderated mediating model showed that defensive pessimism moderated the mediating effect of time perception on the relationship between content relevance and intertemporal choice preference in negative future scenarios,and the mediating effect of time perception was significant only when individuals adopted defensive pessimism strategy instead of optimistic strategy.This study sheds a light on the negative dimension of episodic future thinking,revealing the influence and underlying mechanism of content relevance of negative episodic future thinking on intertemporal choice,which can help us make a more comprehensive understanding of the negative future thoughts in our daily life,and promote more far-sighted decisions under appropriate circumstance.