How did I do it then? How will I do it later? A theoretical review of the impact of mental time travel on decision-making processes

Abstract

Mentally traveling to one's personal past and future connects the current self with self at different points in time. When making decisions in the present, individuals benefit from their past and potential future decisions with the help of mental time travel. This review documents the theoretical and empirical studies concerning mental time travel to past and future decisions and their influence on current decision-making processes. Particularly, certain characteristics of past and future decisions directly or indirectly influence present life decisions. Synthesizing the existing literature, we developed a theoretical model suggests that temporally close decisions tend to include different type of details and diverge from distant decisions in terms of personal meaningfulness. Further, past and future decisions that are elaborated and meaningful, have a great impact on present decisions. Future empirical work testing this model has the potential to generate findings that will inform intervention strategies towards improved decision-making.