Approaching future rewards or waiting for them to arrive: Spatial representations of time and intertemporal choice.

ABSTRACT: Our mental representation of the passage of time is structured by concepts of spatial motion, including an ego-moving perspective in which the self is perceived as approaching future events and a time-moving perspective in which future events are perceived as approaching the self. While previous research has found that processing spatial information in one's environment can preferentially activate either an ego-moving or time-moving temporal perspective, potential downstream impacts on everyday decision-making have received less empirical attention. Based on the idea people may feel closer to positive events they see themselves as actively approaching rather than passively waiting for, in this pre-registered study we tested the hypothesis that spatial primes corresponding to an ego-moving

SUBMITTER: Fletcher D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10997117 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature