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02-04-2024 | Research

Uncertainty salience reduces the accessibility of episodic future thoughts

Auteurs: Marianthi Terpini, Arnaud D’Argembeau

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 4/2024

Abstract

We live in uncertain times and how this pervasive sense of uncertainty affects our ability to think about the future remains largely unexplored. This study aims to investigate the effects of uncertainty salience on episodic future thinking—the ability to mentally represent specific future events. Experiment 1 assessed the impact of uncertainty on the accessibility of episodic future thoughts using an event fluency task. Participants were randomly assigned to either an uncertainty induction or control condition, and then were asked to imagine as many future events as possible that could happen in different time periods. The results showed that participants in the uncertainty condition produced fewer events, suggesting that uncertainty salience reduced the accessibility of episodic future thoughts. Experiment 2 investigated in further detail the mechanisms of production of episodic future thoughts that are affected by uncertainty. The results showed that uncertainty primarily reduced the accessibility of previously formed future thoughts (i.e., memories of the future) rather than affecting the ability to generatively think about the future and construct events. These findings shed new light on the impact of uncertainty on episodic future thinking, paving the way to further investigation into its implications for decision-making and future-oriented behavior.

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volgende artikel Correction: Uncertainty salience reduces the accessibility of episodic future thoughts

As this method for inducing uncertainty has proved effective in many previous studies (for review, see van den Boss, 2009), we did not include a manipulation check. However, the written responses given by participants showed that all participants in the uncertainty group gave responses related to uncertainty (e.g., negative emotions), while almost all participants in the control group described watching movies and series as a positive experience, often stating that it was a way to relax and disconnect from the world. There were two exceptions in which participants described negative emotions, and one of them explicitly referred to a sense of uncertainty when watching movies/series. However, excluding these two participants did not change the pattern of results reported here.

It should be noted that some event descriptions were repeated, notably across time windows (i.e., next week, next month, and next year). As participants were asked to summarize each event in a brief statement of two or three words, it is difficult to know whether these repeated statements refer to the same event or to different events (e.g., the same statement “meet a friend” could refer to two separate events, such as meeting a different friend). However, to check that the reported results were not due to repetitions, we reran the analysis after excluding repeated statements (in total, 284 statements out of 3721 were excluded). This analysis indicated that the number of future events produced remained significantly lower in the uncertainty condition (M = 17.1, SD = 7.13) than in the control condition (M = 23.2, SD = 9.10), t(169) = 4.95, p < .001, d = 0.76.

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Titel: Uncertainty salience reduces the accessibility of episodic future thoughts
Auteurs: Marianthi Terpini
Arnaud D’Argembeau
Publicatiedatum: 02-04-2024
Uitgeverij: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 4/2024
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-024-01962-9

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