Boucher Chantelle, Skinner Timothy, Chan Carina K Y
Department of Psychology, Counselling and Therapy, School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
The Australian Centre for Behavioural Research in Diabetes, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
Health Psychol Behav Med. 2025 Jul 17;13(1):2531948. doi: 10.1080/21642850.2025.2531948. eCollection 2025.
Delay discounting is the tendency when people choose an immediate smaller reward over a delayed, larger reward in decision-making. Higher delay discounting is associated with maladaptive behaviours that can interfere with long-term goal pursuits, whilst low delay discounting is associated with better outcomes in health, academic, and social domains. Episodic Future Thinking is a promising strategy for decreasing delay discounting. Narrative Episodic Future Thinking (NEFT) has shown to be more effective than traditional Episodic Future Thinking. NEFT involves imagining life experiences in personal narratives, therefore imagining future events with a theme makes the events more meaningful, and better able to influence decision-making. This proof-of-concept study aimed to discover if it is feasible to build upon the success of NEFT intervention online and how it may impact on goal salience.
Adults ( = 147) from the general population were recruited from social media, the university's Participant Registry and in local community areas. Participants ( = 63) were randomly allocated to Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT) or NEFT group and attended an online session where they mentally visualised past events or a series of connected future events over several time-points. They rehearsed the mental imagery using cues generated at their allocated group for two weeks.
Repeated measures ANOVAs showed a significant main effect of time and a significant interaction effect between group and time. Participants allocated to NEFT had reduced delay discounting score and increased goal likeliness over time whilst participants allocated to ERT had increased delay discounting score and decreased goal likeliness over time.
As 84.13% of participants who participated in intervention completed the study, all participants successfully generated cues online, and online NEFT significantly reduced delay discounting, this study demonstrated that running NEFT intervention online to reduce delay discounting in the general population is feasible.
延迟折扣是指人们在决策时倾向于选择即时的较小奖励而非延迟的较大奖励。较高的延迟折扣与可能干扰长期目标追求的适应不良行为相关，而较低的延迟折扣与健康、学术和社会领域的更好结果相关。情景未来思维是一种有前景的降低延迟折扣的策略。叙事情景未来思维（NEFT）已被证明比传统的情景未来思维更有效。NEFT涉及在个人叙事中想象生活经历，因此以一个主题想象未来事件会使这些事件更有意义，并且更能影响决策。这项概念验证研究旨在探究在NEFT干预在线成功的基础上进行拓展是否可行以及它可能如何影响目标显著性。
从社交媒体、大学的参与者登记册和当地社区招募了来自普通人群的成年人（n = 147）。参与者（n = 63）被随机分配到情景近期思维（ERT）组或NEFT组，并参加一个在线课程，在课程中他们在几个时间点上在脑海中想象过去的事件或一系列连贯的未来事件。他们使用在各自分配的组中生成的线索对心理意象进行了两周的演练。
重复测量方差分析显示出时间的显著主效应以及组与时间之间的显著交互效应。随着时间的推移，被分配到NEFT组的参与者延迟折扣得分降低且目标可能性增加，而被分配到ERT组的参与者延迟折扣得分增加且目标可能性降低。
由于参与干预的84.13%的参与者完成了研究，所有参与者都成功地在线生成了线索，并且在线NEFT显著降低了延迟折扣，这项研究表明在普通人群中在线进行NEFT干预以降低延迟折扣是可行的。
