The future seen: Does episodic future thinking influence health decision-making in adolescents?

Although prior research has clearly demonstrated the general impact of episodic future thinking (EFT) on behavioral decision-making, there has been a scarcity of studies investigating how different features of EFT might variably affect health-related intertemporal choices in adolescents. This lack of research hinders our comprehension of the functional specificity of EFT. The present research aimed to examine how three specific characteristics of EFT (i.e., temporal distance, health relevance, and simulation perspective) influence health-related intertemporal decision-making in adolescent populations. Three experiments were designed and conducted with 248 adolescents aged 15 to 17 years. The decision-making was measured by health-related intertemporal decision-making task. Study 1 experimentally manipulated temporal distance through an episodic thinking imagination task, comparing intertemporal choice between a near-term EFT condition and a long-term EFT condition. Study 2 manipulated the content of EFT (specifically for long-term EFT), comparing intertemporal choice between a health-relevant EFT condition and a health-irrelevant EFT condition. Study 3 manipulated the perspective adopted during EFT simulation (specifically for long-term EFT within health-relevant content), comparing intertemporal choice between a first-person perspective EFT condition and a third-person perspective EFT condition. Study 1 found that ‌long-term‌ EFT was more conducive to health decisions than near-term‌ EFT. Study 2 found that ‌health-relevant‌ EFT was more effective than ‌health-irrelevant‌ EFT. Study 3 found that ‌third-person‌ perspective simulation promoted better health decisions compared to ‌first-person‌ perspective simulation. These findings highlight the functional specificity of EFT and suggest that its impact on intertemporal decision-making can be optimized by manipulating temporal distance, content relevance, and simulation perspective.