A role for affect in the link between episodic simulation and prosociality

ABSTRACT

Prospection and prosociality are hallmarks of our species. Little is known, however, about how our ability to imagine or simulate specific future events contributes to our capacity for prosociality. Here, we investigated this relationship, revealing how the affective response that arises from a simulated prosocial event motivates a willingness to help a person in need. Across two experiments, people reported being more willing to help in specific situations after simulating future helping events that elicited positive (versus negative or neutral) affect. Positive affect increased engagement of theory of mind for the person in need, which in turn informed prosocial responses. Moreover, the subjective experience of scene imagery and theory of mind systematically couple together depending on the affective valence of future simulations, providing new insight into how affective valence guides a prosocial function of episodic simulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Episodic memory
• episodic future thinking
• emotion
• morality
• theory of mind

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Hynds for her help with stimuli preparation and data collection as a research assistant. We thank E. Herder, and the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Boston College for helpful discussions on drafts of the manuscript. This work was partially supported by Martin Seligman through a Templeton Science of Prospection Award to B. Gaesser, L. Young, and E. Kensinger.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by John Templeton Foundation, Science of Prospection Award.