Relationship between dysphoric state and visual perspective during emotional episodic future thinking:

Abstract

Visual perspective during autobiographical memory recall and episodic future thinking is associated with psychiatric disorders, such that people with depression are less likely to imagine positive future thoughts from a first-person perspective than healthy people. The aim of Experiment 1 was to examine the relationship between the visual perspective when imagining positive future events and dysphoric tendencies. Experiment 2 was conducted to replicate the findings of Experiment 1 and to examine the influence of emotional valence of future events on the relationship between visual perspective and dysphoria. The results showed no significant correlation between dysphoric tendency and visual perspective, regardless of the valence of future events. However, in both experiments, dysphoric tendency was associated with certain aspects other than visual perspective, such as plausibility, only for positive future thinking. Accordingly, our results suggest that dysphoric tendency may not be related to the visual perspective of future thinking, but may relate to other aspects, such as vividness.