Likelihood and familiarity in the simulation of future events
Abstract
Episodic future thinking is the ability to project the self forward in time to pre-experience an event (Atance & O’Neill, 2001). Understanding how people think about potential future events is an important component of human memory research. We investigated whether and how episodic future thinking is influenced by a person's belief of the likelihood of its future occurrence in their lives, as well as a person's familiarity with that type of event based on their past experience. The combined and individual effects of these variables have been minimally studied, particularly likelihood. We used three norming studies to develop participant-specific sets of future events that varied by likelihood and familiarity. Participants generated events and rated phenomenological aspects of their simulations. Likelihood and familiarity interacted in influencing people's simulation of future events, specifically on the simulated perceptual information. Both variables influenced episodic future event simulations on their own as well. The enhancement of future event simulations by the likelihood of an event occurring in a person's future suggests that it is an important part of the underlying mechanisms that support episodic future thinking.