Involuntary and voluntary mental time travel in high and low worriers

Abstract

Worry as a trait is an individual's general tendency to become worried, which in severe cases is associated with the diagnosis Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to mentally project oneself into one's personal past or future, in terms of memories of personal past events or projections of possible events in the personal future. MTT can be voluntarily initiated or occur involuntarily. The current exploratory study investigated involuntary and voluntary MTT in the context of trait worry, thereby bringing together research on worry and MTT. High (N=20) and low (N=16) worriers recorded involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories and future projections using a structured diary method. We predicted that MTT in high worriers would show signs of cognitive avoidance, such as reduced emotional intensity, more observer perspective, less visual imagery, or coming up with overgeneral or less self-relevant events. We found only partial support for our hypotheses in that high worriers rated personal memories and future projections lower on measures of self-relevance than did low worriers.

Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

“…Notably, involuntary future MTT differed from voluntary future MTT in the same ways as for involuntary memories: Regardless of temporal orientation, involuntary representations were more specific and had greater emotional impact. Additionally, involuntary MTT arose in situations involving diffuse attention and had identifiable triggers either in the external environment or internal thoughts (Berntsen & Jacobsen, 2008;Finnbogadόttir & Berntsen, 2011). The differences found between past and future involuntary MTT were consistent with the voluntary MTT literature (see above).…”

“…This was achieved by adapting a paradigm originally designed to study autobiographical memory (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili, 2008). This paradigm was validated by replicating and extending the findings of prior studies utilizing naturalistic methods showing differences between involuntary versus voluntary MTT (Berntsen & Jacobsen, 2008;Finnbogadόttir & Berntsen, 2011). Additionally, we replicated differences between past versus future voluntary representation and extended these to involuntary representations elicited in the laboratory.…”

“…It is also reported that future MTT is more personally important to the self than past MTT (Addis, Wong & Schacter, 2008;Berntsen & Bohn, 2010). Finally, it has been demonstrated that future representations are temporally closer to the present than their mnemonic counterparts (Addis et al, 2008;Spreng & Levine, 2006; see also Berntsen & Jacobsen, 2008;Finnbogadόttir & Berntsen, 2011;Miles & Berntsen, 2011).…”

“…This study, and one other (Finnbogadόttir & Berntsen, 2011), employed the diary methodology described above, although in addition to involuntary past events, participants were instructed that future events may also, effortlessly, come to mind. Findings indicated that future projections were as frequent as rememberings of past events (Berntsen & Jacobsen, 2008;Finnbogadόttir & Berntsen, 2013, around 20 per day).…”

Frequency, characteristics, and perceived functions of emotional future thinking in daily life

“…Results from diary studies have indicated that involuntary future event representations are as common as involuntary autobiographical memories in daily life, and that future event representations are more positive and idyllic than memories for past events (Berntsen & Jacobsen, 2008;Finnbogadóttir & Berntsen, 2013). In addition, positive future-oriented thoughts are more frequent (D'Argembeau et al, 2011), more specific, and associated with more visual images than negative future-oriented thoughts (Finnbogadóttir & Berntsen, 2011;D'Argembeau et al, 2011). Beyond this valence effect, the emotional properties of the future-oriented thoughts that occur in daily life remain unknown.…”