Feeling connected to one's future self and imagining one's personal future (Episodic Future Thinking, EFT), are known to attenuate short-sighted decision making in adults. Less is known about how these constructs overlap, or how they relate to impulsivity in adolescents.This study investigated how future self-connectedness, EFT and a number of other futureoriented constructs relate to one another and to the tendency to discount the future. 175 adolescents (11 -18 years) completed measures of EFT, future self-connectedness, time attitudes, temporal focus, depressive symptomatology and temporal discounting. EFT and future self-connectedness were significantly correlated, indicating adolescents who felt connected to their future selves imagined the future with greater episodic richness. EFT and future self-connectedness independently predicted discounting. Weak associations between the future-oriented constructs, and their differential relations with discounting, indicate these measures assess distinct, but loosely related temporal constructs. Results suggest that combined interventions may improve future-oriented decision making in adolescents.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.