The Influence of future thinking on prosocial behavior

Previous studies suggest a link between episodic mental simulations and prosocial behaviors, but this association is not fully understood. Here, we aimed to test whether prospection (or future thinking) could foster prosocial behaviors, and whether these prosocial behaviors correlate with several empathic traits. We also investigated whether the link between prospection and prosociality was mediated by cognitive empathy. Forty-eight participants received a future fluency (prospection condition) or verbal fluency (control condition) task and then played the Zürich Prosocial Game (ZPG; Leiberg, Klimecki, & Singer, 2011) in which they could help other fictitious participants. Consistent with our hypothesis, the results revealed that participants in the prospection condition engaged in significantly more prosocial behaviors than participants in the control condition. In addition, dispositional orientation towards the future and the past was significantly associated with empathy traits. Empathy traits were partially related to prosocial behaviors in the ZPG. However, we found no evidence that cognitive empathy mediated the relationship between prospection and prosociality. In summary, our findings provide initial evidence indicating that future thinking increases prosocial behaviors and that dispositional temporal orientation is related to empathy. These results are in line with the hypothesis of common core processes in different episodic simulations (Hassabis & Maguire, 2007). Finally, our research also confirms a link between empathy and prosocial behavior (Underwood & Moore, 1982).