Episodic future thought: Contributions from working memory

The ability to imagine hypothetical events in one’s personal future is thought to involve a number of constituent cognitive processes. We investigated the extent to which individual differences in working memory capacity contribute to facets of episodic future thought. College students completed simple and complex measures of working memory and were cued to recall autobiographical memories and imagine future autobiographical events consisting of varying levels of specificity (i.e., ranging from generic to increasingly specific and detailed events). Consistent with previous findings, future thought was related to analogous measures of autobiographical memory, likely reflecting overlapping cognitive factors supporting both past and future thought. Additionally, after controlling for autobiographical memory, residual working memory variance independently predicted future episodic specificity. We suggest that when imagining future events, working memory contributes to the construction of a single, coherent, future event depiction, but not to the retrieval or elaboration of event details.     

Positive fantasies dampen charitable giving when many resources are demanded

Previous research found that positive fantasies about an idealized future yield low energy to pursue the fantasized future. We examined how positive fantasies about the resolution of a crisis (i.e., a lack of pain medication in Sierra Leone, the risk of flooding after Hurricane Irene) influence people's agreement to donate to charitable efforts directed at crisis resolution. In three studies, positive fantasies dampened the likelihood of agreeing to donate a relatively large amount of money, effort, or time, but did not affect the likelihood of agreeing to donate a relatively small amount of these resources. The effect of positive fantasies was mediated by perceiving the donation of larger (but not smaller) amounts of resources as overly demanding. These findings suggest that charitable solicitations requesting small donations might benefit from stimulating positive fantasies in potential donors, but those requesting large donations could be hurt.     

Introduction

This introduction presents the project of a one‐day meeting on the future of philosophical research, hosted by the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London, on 13 January 2012. The meeting brought together several distinguished philosophers and scholars in their roles as journal editors and publishing experts, in order to clarify and discuss the future of philosophical research. This symposium in Metaphilosophy collects a selection of the papers presented at the meeting and some invited articles.     

Unresolved questions in nudging research: Putting the psychology back in nudging

Nudging interventions are broadly defined as a rearrangement of a choice context that gently suggests a specific choice. Their increasing popularity has attracted attention and discussion from researchers, policy makers, and practitioners alike. After some applications to domains such as health, environmental issues, and retirement savings, the next step in nudging is to understand the psychological boundary conditions when applied to varied domains of daily life. It is yet unclear for example to what extent nudging interventions can be transparent without losing effectiveness, or how permanent the effects are. These unresolved questions may have contributed to heated political and scientific discussions, on for example the ethics of using nudges in the public health domain, due to the missing scientific evidence. Indeed, this popularity may have led to forget how nudging harnesses insights from decades of research in psychology to change people's behavior. The aim of this paper is to shift the focus back to the psychological premises nudges were built upon. It summarizes several outstanding questions that future research in the psychology of nudging should address. Advancing research in nudging will help to improve our understanding of applied nudging interventions and provide clarity to debates such as ethical appropriateness, effectiveness, and public approval.     

Seeing into the Future: Future Time Orientation as a Moderator of Temporal Distance Effects on Educators' Decisions

Research suggests that the temporal distance from decision outcomes leads to divergent decisions for the near and the distal future. As such, high‐level idealistic concerns and values dominate decisions for the distant future, whereas low‐level pragmatic concerns play a greater role in decisions for the near future. We examined how individual differences in future time orientation are related to decisions vis‐à‐vis the near versus the distal future. The results of three studies, with participants with varying levels of expertise—students (Studies 2 and 3), teachers (Study 1), and school principals (Study 2)—show that principals tend to be overall more idealistic in their choices. Yet discrepancies between decisions for the near versus the distal future exist among all three levels of expertise. However, this dominance of idealistic over pragmatic concerns for more distant future decisions effect was smaller the higher the future time orientation was (whether measured or manipulated). Implications for educational and managerial decision making and training are discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A role for affect in the link between episodic simulation and prosociality

Prospection and prosociality are hallmarks of our species. Little is known, however, about how our ability to imagine or simulate specific future events contributes to our capacity for prosociality. Here, we investigated this relationship, revealing how the affective response that arises from a simulated prosocial event motivates a willingness to help a person in need. Across two experiments, people reported being more willing to help in specific situations after simulating future helping events that elicited positive (versus negative or neutral) affect. Positive affect increased engagement of theory of mind for the person in need, which in turn informed prosocial responses. Moreover, the subjective experience of scene imagery and theory of mind systematically couple together depending on the affective valence of future simulations, providing new insight into how affective valence guides a prosocial function of episodic simulation.     

Reconstructing the times of past and future personal events

Humans have the remarkable ability to mentally travel through past and future times. However, while memory for the times of past events has been much investigated, little is known about how imagined future events are temporally located. Using a think-aloud protocol, we found that the temporal location of past and future events is rarely directly accessed, but instead mostly relies on reconstructive and inferential strategies. References to lifetime periods and factual knowledge (about the self, others, and the world) were most frequently used to determine the temporal location of both past and future events. Event details (e.g., places, persons, or weather conditions) were also used, but mainly for past events. Finally, the results showed that events whose temporal location was directly accessed were judged more important for personal goals. Together, these findings shed new light on the mechanisms involved in locating personal events in past and future times.     

The Future of Theological Education: A Speculative Glimpse at 20321

Abstract : While the long‐term future is unpredictable, institutions need a way of seeing their work past the present. This article identifies the forces that cause change in theological schools and speculates about the characteristics that theological schools will exhibit in twenty years in light of the most significant forces that will influence them, including denominational and congregational issues, the changing racial/ethnic composition of the American population, the changing character of global Christianity, and the changing practices of American higher education.     

学校氛围与初中生学业成就:学业情绪的中介和未来取向的调节作用

采用问卷法对1243名初中生进行调查研究,考察了学业情绪在学校氛围与初中生学业成就间的中介效应,以及未来取向对这一中介过程的调节效应。结果发现,（1）在控制了性别、年级、社会经济地位后,学校氛围对学业成就具有正向预测作用;（2）积极低唤醒学业情绪和消极低唤醒学业情绪显著中介学校氛围与学业成就的关系;（3）未来取向显著调节学校氛围对初中生学业成绩的直接路径,以及通过积极低唤醒和消极低唤醒学业情绪影响学业成绩的间接路径;即学校氛围和积极低唤醒学业情绪对学业成绩的影响在低未来取向的青少年群体中更为强烈;而学校氛围对消极低唤醒学业情绪的影响在高未来取向的青少年群体中更为强烈。总之,在学校氛围影响初中生学业成就的过程中,既存在中介效应,又存在调节效应。实际干预时,可以通过改善初中生学业情绪提高初中生的学业成就,未来取向可以进一步调节该过程。     

The invasion of reality (or of negotiation): The psychoanalytic ethic and extinction anxiety

Extinction anxiety is the expression used to describe a pervasive and ever more realistic sense of futurelessness. A group emotion characterized by terror of the extinction of the human race, the family, or professional or shared cultural group, it grips the individual with a sense of desperation and impotence through the internal groups present in the mind of every individual. The contribution presented here aims to demonstrate how extinction anxiety has also infected psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic institutions, thereby seriously weakening the ethics of psychoanalysis. The term ethics here should not be confused with morals, but is intended as the happiness that is derived from the capacity to be responsible for one's self and one's own professional identity. The contagion of extinction anxiety has, in fact, accentuated the crisis of psychoanalysts and their faith in psychoanalysis. The author relates a particularly tormented clinical experience in order to show how only the relationship with psychoanalysis and its capacity to interpret the manifestations of the unconscious, enables the recognition of the effects of what he defines as a true invasion of reality, thus restoring to thought the power to establish a deep, transformative, and fecund relationship between internal and external reality.