Mental time travel might help us to circumvent impulsive choices or opportunistic motivation.
Left to right: Halima Rafi, Ynès Bouamoud, Sebastian Baez Lugo, Christel Maradan, Patricia Cernadas Curotto, Yacila Deza Araujo, Olga Klimecki
"Plenty of research has shown that thinking about the future can shift our intentions to behave better, from planning to save more money for retirement to helping out in a theoretical situation.
"But do these intentions translate to a change in our behavior? This is what Olga Maria Klimecki-Lenz, who is a neuroscientist and psychologist, as well as a practicing mediator who has worked with diplomats and heads of state, and Cernadas Curotto, a psychology researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and their colleagues set out to answer through a study published earlier this year.
"To probe the theory, they asked study participants to spend just one minute thinking of either as many things as possible that might happen to them in the next year or as many animals as they could. Next each participant played the Zurich Prosocial Game. In the game, the players race against a clock to navigate through mazes and score points by collecting treasures. On the screen they can see another “player” navigating different paths to different treasures. As obstacles appear before the players, the participant has the ability—but not the instruction—to help remove them for the other player. Those who had spent their fleeting minute thinking about the future helped the other player much more often, suggesting that just a brief mental trip into the future can actually make people behave more generously toward others." -