The Research Of The Effect Of Episodic Future Thinking On Undergraduates' Delay Of Gratification

Good ability to delay gratification can help students achieve success,to obtain self-worth.At the moment when information is blown out and entertainment is paramount,college students face a lot of temptations and need to maintain good ability to delay gratification.In order to understand the general ability of delay of gratification of college students,the general delay gratification questionnaire GDGQ was translated and revised,which formed an effective tool for measuring the general delay of gratification behavior of college students.Then,through three experiments,the influence of future episodic thinking on delay of gratification is discussed,in order to provide a new strategy for improving the ability of college students to delay gratification.The research results are as follows:(1)Through project analysis,exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis,an effective tool for measuring the general ability of delay of gratification of college students is formed.The reliability and validity of the questionnaire is ideal.There are 11 items in total,comes down to two dimensions:impulsive control and planned waiting.There is a significant difference in gender in the delay of gratification of college students.The general ability of delay of gratification of boys is significantly higher than that of girls(t(305)=2.205,p=0.028<0.05).In different grades,the results of ANOVA and post hoc test showed that there was a significant difference in the general ability of delay of gratification of college students,in which freshman,sophomore>junior,senior(F=5.767,p=0.001<0.01).(2)In the study of the influence of future episodic thinking on the delay of gratification of college students,the results of independent samples t-test showed that virtual money in the experimental group(future scenarios thinking group)obtained in the delay of gratification task and the time delay waiting were significantly greater than in the control group(past scenario thinking group)(t(55)=2.160,p=0.036<0.05;t(55)=2.578,p=0.014<0.05),indicating that the participants in the future episodic thinking group showed more tendency to delay gratification.(3)The paired sample t test is used to compare the virtual amount and delay waiting time of the content-related and content-independent future episodic thinking group in the delay of gratification task.The results show that the virtual amount is significantly higher than the content-independent group(t(27)=2.469,p=0.020<0.05).At the same time,the content-related future episodic thinking group is also expected to endure longer waiting time significantly than the content-independent group(t(27)=2.203,p=0.036<0.05).Explaining that the content-related future episodic thinking group's tendency to delay gratification is significantly higher than the content-independent future episodic thinking group.(4)The impact of future episodic thinking on different emotional valence and content relevance on college students' delayed gratification found that there was a significant interaction between emotional valence and content relevance(F=4.652,p=0.036<0.05;F=4.501,p=0.039<0.05).Further simple effect analysis showed that participants in the positive emotional valency group had significantly obtained greater amount of virtual money and endured longer waiting time in delay-satisfied tasks,whether in the content-related EFT setting or content-independent EFT setting than negative emotional valence group.In positive emotional valence,the subjects in content-related future episodic thinking setting obtained greater amount of virtual money and endured longer waiting time than those in content-independent group,but there was no significant difference in content relevance at the negative emotional valence level.