Prospection

In psychology, prospection is the generation and evaluation of mental representations of possible futures. The term therefore captures a wide array of future-oriented psychological phenomena, including the prediction of future emotion (affective forecasting), the imagination of future scenarios (episodic foresight), and planning. Prospection is central to various aspects of human cognition and motivation. Daniel Gilbert (psychologist) and Timothy Wilson coined the term in 2007. It has since become a central area of enquiry in the cognitive sciences.[1][2][3]

Prospection and learning

Even fundamental learning processes are, in some sense, forms of prospection.[4][5] Associative learning enables individual animals to track local regularities in their environments and adapt their behaviour accordingly, in order to maximise their chances of positive outcomes and minimise risks. Animals that are capable of positive and negative states (for example pleasure and pain) can eventually learn about the consequences of their actions and thereby predict imminent rewards and punishments before they occur. This enables animals to change their current actions accordingly in line with prospective consequences.

Relationship with mental time travel
Main article: Mental time travel

Mental time travel refers to the ability to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past (known as episodic memory), as well as to imagine personal future events (known as episodic foresight). Mental time travel into the future (episodic foresight or episodic future thinking) is therefore one of several types of 'prospection' that refers to the capacity to simulate or imagine personal future events.[6][7]

Examples of the functions of prospection

Episodic foresight
Main article: Foresight (psychology)

Episodic foresight is the capacity to imagine personal future scenarios and shape current action accordingly.[8]

Predicting future emotions (affective forecasting)
Main article: Affective forecasting

The feelings evoked during episodic foresight enable people to infer how they would really feel if the event were to happen in reality. This thereby enables people to anticipate whether future events are desirable or undesirable, and ability called 'affective forecasting'.[9]

Prospective intentions
Main article: Prospective memory

Simulating the future enables people to create intentions for future actions. Prospective memory is the form of memory that involves remembering to perform these planned intentions, or to recall them at some future point in time.[10] Prospective memory tasks are common in everyday life, ranging from remembering to post a letter to remembering to take one's medication.

Deliberate practice
Main article: Practice (learning method)

People anticipate that it is possible to shape their future self. To acquire new knowledge or additional skills, people therefore engage in repeated actions driven by the goal to improve these future capacities. This deliberate practice is essential not only for elite performance but also in the acquirement of numerous everyday feats.

Flexible decision-making
Main article: Intertemporal choice

Intertemporal choices are choices with outcomes that play out over time.[11] Such decisions are ubiquitous in everyday life, ranging from routine decisions about what to eat for lunch (i.e. whether to adhere to a diet) to more profound decisions about climate change (i.e. whether to reduce current energy expenditure to avoid delayed costs). The ability to imagine future scenarios and adjust decisions accordingly may be important for making intertemporal choices in a flexible manner that accords with delayed consequences. Accumulating evidence suggests that cuing people to imagine the future in vivid detail can encourage preferences for delayed outcomes over immediate ones.[12][13] This has been extended into real-world decisions such as in reducing the consumption of high-calorie food[14] and increasing pro-environmental behaviours.[15]

Clinical impairment

In recent years there have been a range of investigations into variation in prospection and its functions in clinical populations. Deficits to the mechanisms and functions of prospection have been observed in Alzheimer's disease and other age-related dementias,[16] Schizophrenia, and after brain damage (especially to the medial temporal lobes).[17]

Shifts in the content and modes of prospection have been observed in affective disorders.[18][19] For example, in both clinical depression and anxiety there is an overrepresentation of possible negative future events. In depression, there is additionally a reduction in the generation of possible positive future events. There are also a range of changes to the representational format (i.e. whether people tend to represent the future in episodic or semantic detail) in affective disorders.[20][21]

See also

References
  1. Seligman, Martin E. P.; Railton, Peter; Baumeister, Roy F.; Sripada, Chandra (27 February 2013). "Navigating Into the Future or Driven by the Past". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 8 (2): 119–141. doi:10.1177/1745691612474317. ISSN 1745-6916. PMID 26172493.
  2. Szpunar, Karl K.; Spreng, R. Nathan; Schacter, Daniel L. (30 December 2014). "A taxonomy of prospection: Introducing an organizational framework for future-oriented cognition: Fig. 1". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (52): 18414–18421. doi:10.1073/pnas.1417144111. PMC 4284580. PMID 25416592.
  3. Suddendorf, T; Bulley, A; Miloyan, B (December 2018). "Prospection and natural selection". Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 24: 26–31. doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.01.019.
  4. Suddendorf, Thomas; Corballis, Michael C. (29 October 2007). "The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?" (PDF). Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 30 (3): 299–313, discussion 313–51. doi:10.1017/S0140525X07001975. PMID 17963565.
  5. Gilbert, D. T.; Wilson, T. D. (7 September 2007). "Prospection: Experiencing the Future". Science. 317 (5843): 1351–1354. doi:10.1126/science.1144161. PMID 17823345.
  6. Suddendorf, T.; Corballis, M. C. (1997). "Mental time travel and the evolution of the human mind". Genetic, Social, and General Psychology Monographs. 123 (2): 133–167. ISSN 8756-7547. PMID 9204544.
  7. Szpunar, Karl K.; Spreng, R. Nathan; Schacter, Daniel L. (30 December 2014). "A taxonomy of prospection: Introducing an organizational framework for future-oriented cognition: Fig. 1". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 111 (52): 18414–18421. doi:10.1073/pnas.1417144111. PMC 4284580. PMID 25416592.
  8. Suddendorf, Thomas; Moore, Chris (October 2011). "Introduction to the special issue: The development of episodic foresight". Cognitive Development. 26 (4): 295–298. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2011.09.001.
  9. Wilson, Timothy D.; Gilbert, Daniel T. (23 June 2016). "Affective Forecasting". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 14 (3): 131–134. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x.
  10. Einstein, Gilles O.; McDaniel, Mark A. (1990). "Normal aging and prospective memory". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 16 (4): 717–726. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.16.4.717.
  11. Berns, Gregory S.; Laibson, David; Loewenstein, George (November 2007). "Intertemporal choice – toward an integrative framework" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 11 (11): 482–488. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.08.011. PMID 17980645.
  12. Bulley, Adam; Henry, Julie; Suddendorf, Thomas (2016). "Prospection and the present moment: The role of episodic foresight in intertemporal choices between immediate and delayed rewards". Review of General Psychology. 20 (1): 29–47. doi:10.1037/gpr0000061.
  13. Rung, Jillian M.; Madden, Gregory J. (September 2018). "Experimental reductions of delay discounting and impulsive choice: A systematic review and meta-analysis". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 147 (9): 1349–1381. doi:10.1037/xge0000462. PMC 6112163. PMID 30148386.
  14. Dassen, Fania C.M.; Jansen, Anita; Nederkoorn, Chantal; Houben, Katrijn (January 2016). "Focus on the future: Episodic future thinking reduces discount rate and snacking". Appetite. 96: 327–332. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2015.09.032. PMID 26431684.
  15. Lee, Pei-Shan; Sung, Yu-Hsien; Wu, Chia-Chun; Ho, Liang-Chu; Chiou, Wen-Bin (26 July 2018). "Using Episodic Future Thinking to Pre-Experience Climate Change Increases Pro-Environmental Behavior". Environment and Behavior. 52: 60–81. doi:10.1177/0013916518790590.
  16. Irish, Muireann; Piolino, Pascale (March 2016). "Impaired capacity for prospection in the dementias - Theoretical and clinical implications". British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 55 (1): 49–68. doi:10.1111/bjc.12090. PMID 26014112.
  17. Henry, Julie D.; Addis, Donna Rose; Suddendorf, Thomas; Rendell, Peter G. (March 2016). "Introduction to the Special Issue: Prospection difficulties in clinical populations". British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 55 (1): 1–3. doi:10.1111/bjc.12108. PMID 26857430.
  18. MacLeod, Andrew (30 June 2016). "Prospection, well-being and memory". Memory Studies. 9 (3): 266–274. doi:10.1177/1750698016645233.
  19. Roepke, Ann Marie; Seligman, Martin E. P. (March 2016). "Depression and prospection". British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 55 (1): 23–48. doi:10.1111/bjc.12087. PMID 26096347.
  20. Miloyan, Beyon; Pachana, Nancy A.; Suddendorf, Thomas (9 December 2013). "The future is here: A review of foresight systems in anxiety and depression". Cognition and Emotion. 28 (5): 795–810. doi:10.1080/02699931.2013.863179. PMID 24320101.
  21. Bulley, Adam; Henry, Julie D.; Suddendorf, Thomas (March 2017). "Thinking about threats: Memory and prospection in human threat management". Consciousness and Cognition. 49: 53–69. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2017.01.005. PMID 28157585.
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