Nurturing the Temporally Extended Self: Mental Imagery as an Intervention to Increase Future Self-Continuity and Reduce Academic Procrastination

Abstract

I examined how mental imagery practice can increase future self-continuity to reduce academic procrastination. I hypothesized that participants would feel more connected to future self because of increases in vividness and empathy for that self. I also hypothesized that feeling more connected to future self would lead to less procrastination. Results revealed that both future self-continuity and empathic perspective taking were significantly higher for the mental imagery condition than the meditation condition. Furthermore, future self-continuity predicted decreases in procrastination. Latent growth analyses revealed that vividness of future self moderated change in future self-continuity, while empathic perspective taking moderated change in procrastination. Lastly, affective empathy mediated the relation between vividness and future self-continuity. I discuss why participants in both conditions experienced similar change across time. I also explain how the influence of empathic perspective taking on future self-continuity and procrastination is in line with evidence from the empathy literature.