The Effect of Episodic Future Thought on Delay Discounting, Outcome Expectancies, and Alcohol Use among Risky College Drinkers

Positive, but distal consequences of reducing alcohol use among at-risk users may have little impact on behavior due to temporal discounting (Mazur, 1987), in which delayed rewards are devalued relative to more proximal rewards, even if such distal rewards actually provide considerably more value. Delay discounting may be manipulated using a variety of means, one of which involves utilizing prospective thinking about future autobiographical events and is termed Episodic Future Thinking (Atance & O’Neill, 2001). Episodic future thinking (EFT) has been demonstrated in previous studies to be effective in reducing delay discounting relative to a variety of control conditions (Benoit, Gilbert, & Burgess, 2011; Daniel, Stanton, & Epstein, 2013a, 2013b; Lin & Epstein, 2014; Peters & Büchel, 2010) and recently among substanceabusing populations (Snider, LaConte, & Bickel, 2016; Stein et al., 2016). The present study examined EFT in a novel sample of at-risk alcohol users. Participants were randomized to EFT, episodic past thinking (EPT), or a control condition in which non-autobiographical events were recalled (CET). Immediately following intervention, results demonstrated significantly less discounting in EFT and EPT, relative to CET. At follow-up, EFT demonstrated significantly less temporal discounting and alcohol use, when compared to both EPT and CET. No differences among conditions in alcohol demand or alcohol use intentions were observed. The present study contributes a number of novel findings to the literature, most notably that engaging in EFT predicts reductions in alcohol use prospectively and that reductions in delay discounting associated with EFT persist at least a week later, without any additional intervention. Such findings suggest that EFT manipulations influence the valuation of future rewards. Additionally, findings support EFT as a useful supplement to existing empirically-supported treatments or a component of novel substance use disorder treatments. The Effect of Episodic Future Thought on Delay Discounting, Outcome Expectancies, and Alcohol Use among Risky College Drinkers Kelsey E. Banes General Audience Abstract Drug and alcohol addiction is characterized by seemingly illogical decisions to forgo important benefits associated with abstinence or moderated use (e.g., maintaining employment) in favor of the immediate gratification of intoxication. The tendency to favor instant gratification and devalue delayed rewards explains impulsive decision making typical of substance use disorders and other impulse control problems. The present study evaluated whether vividly imagining positive future events reduced this tendency toward instant gratification. College students at high risk for an alcohol use disorder participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one in which they were asked to imagine positive events they anticipated in the future, one in which they were asked to imagine positive events from their past, and one in which they were asked to recall events described in a provided travel blog. Immediately after imagining the events, participants in both the past and future conditions were less oriented towards instant gratification than participants who were asked to recall events from a travel blog. When measured a week later, participants in the future condition reported less devaluation of future rewards, as well as less alcohol use, than participants in the other two groups. Overall, the results of the study provide evidence that vividly imagining positive future events reduces impulsivity among at-risk college student drinkers. As such, imagining future events may be an effective component of future treatment efforts for substance use disorders and other impulse control problems.