Preparing for what might happen: An episodic specificity induction impacts the generation of alternative future events.

ABSTRACT: A critical adaptive feature of future thinking involves the ability to generate alternative versions of possible future events. However, little is known about the nature of the processes that support this ability. Here we examined whether an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting details of a recent experience that selectively impacts tasks that draw on episodic retrieval - (1) boosts alternative event generation and (2) changes one's initial perceptions of negative future events. In Experiment 1, an episodic specificity induction significantly increased the number of alternative positive outcomes that participants generated to a series of standardized negative events, compared with a control induction not focused on episodic specificity. We also observed larger de

SUBMITTER: Jing HG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5612915 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature