Concreteness and emotional valence of episodic future thinking (EFT) independently affect the dynamics of intertemporal decisions

Abstract

During intertemporal decisions, the value of future rewards decreases as a function of the delay of its receipt (temporal discounting, TD). Since high discount rates have been associated with a series of problematic behaviours and clinical conditions, current research has focused on possible modulators of TD. Specifically, a reduction of individual discount rates has been shown during episodic future thinking (EFT), wherein time intervals are anchored to personal future events. However, it is not entirely clear whether this effect is mediated by a change in the representation of future events (i.e., from abstract to concrete) or by a positive-emotion modulation. Here, we investigated this issue by manipulating the valence of the EFT (i.e., using negative, neutral and positive episodic tags), and by collecting explicit and implicit measures of behaviour. The results showed a significant reduction of TD in all the three emotional conditions compared to the baseline, with differences among them, thus suggesting the existence of a cumulative effect of the concreteness and affective components of the EFT. The analyses of implicit measures additionally revealed that this effect was mediated by a simultaneous increase/decrease of attraction toward the delayed/immediate alternative. Finally, these effects appeared to be modulated by participants’ baseline discounting preferences. These findings provide important insights on clinical applications in reward-related disorders.

Future thinking is related to lower delay discounting than recent thinking, regardless of the magnitude of the reward, in individuals with schizotypy

“…Zhang et al, 2018), while several recent studies demonstrated that negative EFT was associated with a reduction of delay discounting (Bulley et al, 2019;Calluso et al, 2019). Calluso et al (2019) demonstrated that EFT effect was guided by a concreteness effect, and the emotional valence exerted a cumulative effect of the increased farsightedness. In the current study, all the EFT and ERT F I G U R E 2 Mean AUC for EFT and ERT group in both small and large magnitude conditions (error bar represents SE).…”

“…Another related explanation is that according to the Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2000, the distant future events are abstractly represented with high construal level, the EFT may induce farsighted decisions in participants by shifting their time construal from an abstract, high level to a concrete, low level; that is, by representing the future events and rewards more concretely, the participants preferred to choose delayed rewards (Calluso et al, 2019). Given that positive autobiographical memory retrieval also decreased delay discounting (Lempert, Speer, Delgado, & Phelps, 2017), we speculate that simulating distant events (both imagining and remembering) could produce similar shift in time construal and then induce farsighted choice.…”

“…As to the emotional valence of the imagined events, studies consistently revealed that positive EFT significantly reduced delay discounting, while the effect of negative EFT was inconsistent (Bulley et al, 2019;Calluso et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2013;S. Zhang et al, 2018).…”

“…For example, some studies showed that negative EFT increased discounting rate (Liu et al, 2013;S. Zhang et al, 2018), while several recent studies demonstrated that negative EFT was associated with a reduction of delay discounting (Bulley et al, 2019;Calluso et al, 2019). Calluso et al (2019) demonstrated that EFT effect was guided by a concreteness effect, and the emotional valence exerted a cumulative effect of the increased farsightedness.…”

“…Therefore, the primary goals of this study were to examine whether EFT induced lower discounting rate compared to episodic recent thinking (ERT) in schizotypy and whether it was related to the magnitude of reward. Given previous studies have consistently shown that positive EFT significantly reduced discounting rate, while the effect of negative EFT was inconsistent (Bulley et al, 2019;Calluso, Tosoni, Cannito, & Committeri, 2019;Liu, Feng, Chen, & Li, 2013;S. Zhang et al, 2018).…”