Psychology Seminar, Dr. Andrew MacLeod (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Future-directed thinking and emotional disorder

Future-directed thinking is vital to our functioning and central to our well-being.  Not surprisingly, emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression are closely tied to alterations in autobiographical future-directed thinking.  In this talk I will discuss some of the ways in which thinking about the future is disrupted in emotional disturbance.  I will also discuss how thinking about the future is distinct from remembering the past, and how that means they need to be understood differently.  For example, the inherent uncertainty built into the future means that the degree of belief is pivotal to future-directed thinking.  Understanding the basis of belief, therefore, becomes important in understanding future-directed thinking.  Two candidate processes linked to degree of belief in what is going to happen in the future - verbally based causal reasoning and the ability to imagine outcomes in a vivid, specific way – will be reviewed and their implications for clinical practice discussed.