Time perspective and emotional future-oriented thoughts

Time perspective —the tendency to focus on the past, present, and/or future— has a pervasive influence on many aspects of human cognition and behaviour, such as decision making, planning, motivation, self-regulation, and sense of identity. Over the last decade, important progress has been made in understanding the representations and processes that support our ability to mentally explore possible futures. More particularly, many thoughts and mental images that people form about their personal future refer to emotionally significant events. Such emotional future-oriented thoughts (EmoFTs) were studied in natural settings and under laboratory conditions. The results showed that EmoFTs are frequent, occur in various contexts, and are perceived to fulfill important functions, mostly related to goal pursuit and emotion regulation. The phenomenological characteristics of EmoFTs (e.g., representational format) vary according to valence. When distinguishing between anticipatory and anticipated emotions (i.e., emotions experienced in the present versus emotions expected to occur in the future), a positivity bias in the frequency of EmoFTs is found to be restricted to anticipated emotions. These findings shed further light on the properties of future oriented-thoughts, and emphasize the importance of their affective components.