The subjective quality of episodic future thought and the experience of meaning in life Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Two studies assessed whether mentally simulating specific future events to occur in familiar (vs. unfamiliar) settings indirectly increases meaning life via the subjective quality of the simulations. Participants in both studies (N=344) were randomly assigned to visualize themselves doing something in familiar (e.g. home) or unfamiliar (e.g. fantasy world) settings in the future. They then rated the subjective quality of these visualizations and completed a measure of meaning in life. We replicated previous findings by showing that mental simulations involving familiar settings were of greater subjective quality than simulations involving unfamiliar settings. However, we also found that simulating future events in familiar (vs. unfamiliar) settings indirectly increased the perceived meaningfulness of life. These findings integrate research in cognitive psychology with research on the psychology of well-being and reveal how mental time travel contributes to the perception that ones life has meaning.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

altmetric score

  • 0.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Vess, M., Hoeldtke, R., Leal, S. A., Sanders, C. S., & Hicks, J. A.

citation count

  • 13

complete list of authors

  • Vess, Matthew||Hoeldtke, Russell||Leal, Stepanie A||Sanders, Courtney S||Hicks, Joshua A

publication date

  • July 2018