Using episodic future thinking (or not?) to optimize decision-making.

A growing body of research shows that thinking episodically about the future (i.e., "episodic future thinking"; EFT) enhances decisions that entail present-future trade-offs. Although such "EFT-cueing" effects have wide-ranging implications for both improving behavioral decision-making (e.g., health-related choices) and theory building, this literature has so far neglected two critical aspects. First, EFT-cueing is not similarly effective across the lifespan, with a majority of recent studies showing no benefit in children and mixed effects in older adults. Second, EFT-cueing has predominantly targeted intertemporal choice, which is but one form of (potentially) biased decision-making; whether other forms might also benefit from EFT-cueing is not known. Accordingly, we draw attention to a set of forecasting biases that EFT-cueing may also mitigate, including projection bias, end of history illusion, impact bias, and the planning fallacy. We also consider whether for populations and biases for which EFT-cueing is less effective, other developmentally and contextually appropriate debiasing techniques/interventions, including emotionally engaging with future events and perspective shifting, need be harnessed. These efforts hold both practical and theoretical implications about how to optimize decision-making across the lifespan and the kinds of interventions best suited to decisional context and developmental stage.