ArticlePsychological research2023
Individual differences in the frequency of voluntary & involuntary episodic memories, future thoughts, and counterfactual thoughts.
Article in Psychological research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Convergent validation of the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory across levels of analysis in a Polish sample.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Validation and Application of Functions of Future Thinking Scale in Chinese Adults.PsyCh journal · 2025Article
- Update on "Emotion and autobiographical memory": 14 years of advances in understanding functions, constructions, and consequences.Physics of life reviews · 2024Review
- Counterfactual thinking induces different neural patterns of memory modification in anxious individuals.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Disentangling boredom from depression using the phenomenology and content of involuntary autobiographical memories.Scientific reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Voluntary and involuntary mental time travel can take the form of episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and episodic counterfactual thinking. This study uses an individual-differences approach to understand why people engage in these forms of mental time travel. The individual-differences variables include trait-level personality, boredom proneness, depression, anxiety, stress, emotion regulation, mindfulness, mind-wandering, positive and negative affect, rumination, optimism, thinking styles, and time perspective. Across two studies, our results indicate that individual differences underlie these forms of mental time travel. The most unique, episodic counterfactual thinking, was alone positively correlated with negative emotionality and negatively correlated with optimism. We also observe differences as a function of voluntariness and discuss these findings in relation to the cognitively demanding nature of constructing future and counterfactual thoughts. We discuss the importance of distinguishing voluntary from involuntary thinking and assessing episodic counterfactual thinking in relation to episodic memory and episodic future thinking.
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Registered trials
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