School of Psychological and Social Sciences, York St John University, York, YO31 7EX, UK.
Psychol Res. 2021 Jun;85(4):1583-1601. doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01338-9. Epub 2020 Apr 21.
Future thinking is defined as the ability to withdraw from reality and mentally project oneself into the future. The primary aim of the present study was to examine whether functions of future thoughts differed depending on their mode of elicitation (spontaneous or voluntary) and an attribute of goal-relatedness (selected-goal-related or selected-goal-unrelated). After producing spontaneous and voluntary future thoughts in a laboratory paradigm, participants provided ratings on four proposed functions of future thinking (self, directive, social, and emotional regulation). Findings showed that spontaneous and voluntary future thoughts were rated similarly on all functions except the directive function, which was particularly relevant to spontaneous future thoughts. Future thoughts classed as goal-related (selected-goal-related) were rated higher across all functions, and there was largely no interaction between mode of elicitation and goal-relatedness. A higher proportion of spontaneous future thoughts were selected-goal-related compared with voluntary future thoughts. In general, these results indicate that future thinking has significant roles across affective, behavioural, self and social functions, and supports theoretical views that implicate spontaneous future thought in goal-directed cognition and behaviour.
未来思维被定义为一种从现实中抽离并在心理上投射自我进入未来的能力。本研究的主要目的是检验未来思维的功能是否因其诱发方式（自发或自愿）和目标相关性的一个属性（选择的目标相关或选择的目标不相关）而异。在实验室范式中产生自发和自愿的未来思维后，参与者对未来思维的四个提议功能（自我、指令、社会和情绪调节）进行了评分。研究结果表明，自发和自愿的未来思维在除指令功能之外的所有功能上的评分都相似，而指令功能特别与自发的未来思维相关。与目标相关（选择的目标相关）的未来思维在所有功能上的评分都较高，并且诱发方式和目标相关性之间几乎没有相互作用。与自愿的未来思维相比，自发的未来思维中选择目标相关的比例更高。总的来说，这些结果表明，未来思维在情感、行为、自我和社会功能方面具有重要作用，并支持了这样一种理论观点，即自发的未来思维与目标导向的认知和行为有关。
