Effects of prospective thinking on intertemporal choice: The role of familiarity.

ABSTRACT: Imagining future events while performing an intertemporal choice task can attenuate the devaluation of future rewards. Here, we investigated whether this effect and its neural basis depend on the degree of personal prior experience associated with the simulated future scenarios. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was combined with a modified intertemporal choice task in which the delayed options were either purely monetary, or linked with a social event. Subject-specific events differed regarding familiarity, that is, meeting a close, familiar person or a celebrity in a café. In line with recent hypotheses on episodic construction, the simulation of future familiar and unfamiliar events equally attenuated delay discounting behavior in comparison with the control condition and both were

SUBMITTER: Sasse LK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6869307 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature