The consideration of future consequences and health behaviour: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

The aim of this meta-analysis was to quantify the direction and strength of associations between the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) scale and intended and actual engagement in three categories of health-related behaviour: health risk, health promotive, and illness preventative/detective behaviour. A systematic literature search was conducted to identify studies that measured CFC and health behaviour. In total, 64 effect sizes were extracted from 53 independent samples. Effect sizes were synthesised using a random-effects model. Aggregate effect sizes for all behaviour categories were significant, albeit small in magnitude. There were no significant moderating effects of the length of CFC scale (long vs. short), population type (college students vs. non-college students), mean age, or sex proportion of study samples. CFC reliability and study quality score significantly moderated the overall association between CFC and health risk behaviour only. The magnitude of effect sizes is comparable to associations between health behaviour and other individual difference variables, such as the Big Five personality traits. The findings indicate that CFC is an important construct to consider in research on engagement in health risk behaviour in particular. Future research is needed to examine the optimal approach by which to apply the findings to behavioural interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Consideration of future consequences
• time orientation
• health behaviour
• intended behaviour
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Editor, Professor Martin Hagger, and our two anonymous reviewers for their time and careful read of our manuscript. Their many insightful comments and suggestions greatly improved the quality of the paper, and strengthened our confidence in the peer-review process. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr Emily Tanner-Smith (Department of Counselling Psychology and Human Services, University of Oregon) and Dr Marcin Szczerbinski (School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork) for their assistance with the analyses conducted.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Irish Research Council [grant number GOIPG/2015/1592].