The perceived controllability of negatively-valenced episodic future thinking modulates delay discounting

Intertemporal decision-making is important for both economy and physical health. Nevertheless, in daily life, individuals tend to prefer immediate and smaller rewards to delayed and larger rewards, which is known as delay discounting (DD). Episodic future thinking (EFT) has been proven to influence DD. However, there is still no inconsistent conclusion on the effect of negative EFT on DD. Considering the perceived controllability of negative EFT may address the issue (Controllability refers to the extent to which progress and result of an event could be controlled by ourselves). In the current study, we manipulated EFT conditions (baseline, neutral EFT, negative-controllable EFT and negative-uncontrollable EFT), delayed time (i.e. 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 3 years) and reward magnitude (small, large). We mainly found that when experiencing negative-uncontrollable EFT compared to negative-controllable EFT in the delayed time of 6 months with large rewards, individuals chose more delayed rewards, suggesting that negative-uncontrollable EFT effectively reduced DD under conditions of both large-magnitude reward and longer delayed time. The current study provides new insight for healthy groups on optimising EFT. In that case, individuals are able to gain long-term benefits in financial management and healthcare.