将来情节想象对事件发生主观可能性的影响

The Effect of Future Episodic Thought on Subjective Probability Estimates

面向未来是人类的本质特征之一。将来情节想象指的是在心理上预先体验将来可能发生的个人事件的能力。尽管最近很多研究集中在将来情节想象的神经机制的探讨上,但其在决策等领域所具有的重要应用价值尚未得到深入研究。本研究采用随机化实验组控制组前测和后测设计探讨了将来情节想象对于将来情绪性事件发生主观可能性的影响。结果发现,将来情节想象能够提高将来事件发生的主观可能性。并且,本研究还首次发现了将来情节想象对将来情绪性事件的影响存在不对称性,即将来情节想象对消极事件主观可能性的提升效应要比其对积极事件主观可能性的提升效应要大。本研究分别从可用性启发、解释水平理论和情绪的作用等角度分别探讨了该现象背后可能的机制。

One of the fundamental features of human beings is the capacity to envisage the future.Episodic future thought refers to the ability to image specific personal episodes that will potentially occur in the future.Recently,despite accumulating evidence focusing on the neural correlates of episodic future thought,there is a surprisingly large gap in our knowledge concerning its important implications.A randomized pretest-posttest control group design was employed to investigate the effect of future episodic thought on subjective probability estimates of future events.The results demonstrated that the episodic future thought can enhance the possibility of future emotional events.Furthermore,there was an asymmetry effect among the effect of episodic future thought on the emotional events.Specifically,the enhancing effect of episodic future thought on the negative events was greater than that of episodic future thought on the positive events.The results arre interpreted from the availability heuristic,construal level theory and the mediator of emotion.