What’s there in your future: Can Episodic Specificity Induction impact episodic future thinking specificity, uncertainty attitude, hopelessness, worry, and affect?

Difficulty simulating specific future episodes of oneself is associated with affective disorders. Previous research suggests that episodic future thinking might be associated with several clinical correlates, including aversion under uncertainty, hopelessness, worry, and positive and negative affect. However, little research has studied whether one’s ability to think about his future specifically could be modified, together with positive outcomes of these clinical correlates. A brief memory-based training, Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI), was used to test whether training people to think about a past event in a specific way would enhance their specificity when thinking about their future, and improve the other clinical correlates. ESI was compared against an Episodic General Induction (EGI), where participants were asked to discuss a past event generally, or a Mathematics Control. The present study adopted a within-subjects design (N = 50), with each participant undergoing both ESI and one control (either EGI or Mathematics; each with n = 25), at two time points and with the order of induction counterbalanced. Participants showed no improvement in episodic future thinking nor the other clinical correlates under ESI, relative to either control. Furthermore, episodic future thinking specificity was not found to correlate with the other clinical correlates. However, participants’ episodic future thinking improved over time under ESI vs. EGI, regardless of the order of induction, and they reported higher positive affect under EGI when EGI was assigned in the first session. Future research and potential clinical implications of these findings were discussed, followed by limitations and suggestions.