Emotional Cognitive Bias Of Individual Future Thought And Collective Future Thought

Collective future thought refers to imagining a group event that hasn’t happened yet.Individual future thought and collective future thought are separated based on emotional valence.Further explorations of emotional cognitive bias and influencing factors of collective future thought are of great theoretical significance to the study of collective future thought.Previous studies on collective future thought were carried out under the background of western culture,while China is a country of typical collectivist culture showing different from western countries in which individualism prevails.Studies have proved that in the context of western culture,collective future thought has a negativity bias,while individual future thought has a positivity bias.But in the context of Chinese culture,is collective future thought a positivity bias or a negativity bias?In addition,temporal distance has an important influence on the future imagination.Is there any difference in the influence of temporal distance on the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and collective future thought? Group-reference effect showed that the group identification level affects the individual’s cognitive processing.The identification and familiarity of Chinese individuals tend to have a decreasing trend towards their family,China and the United States,and it is believed that the emotional cognition of the collective future thought varies from one imagined group to another.So imagined groups are likely to have an important influence on the emotional cognition of the collective future thought.So,the study focuses on the following problems on the basis of the future fluency tasks and phenomenological assessment: the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and collective future thought in the context of Chinese culture(study 1);the influence of temporal distance on the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and collective future thought(study 2A);finally,the imagined group of collective future thinking are expanded to explore the influence of the imagined group on the emotional cognitive bias of collective future thought(study 2B).Study 1 used the future fluency task.Participants were asked to imagine future positive events and future risk events of individuals and China respectively,and to evaluate the phenomenological characteristics of each future event after the imagination was completed.Its main purpose is to explore the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and collective future thought.With repeated measure ANOVA analysis,the author found that: in terms of the number of future events,the main effects of imagination range and emotional valence were significant,and both individual future thought and collective future thought had more positive events than negative events.At the same time,the differences between individual future thought and collective future thought are reflected in the possibility,emotional arousal,details and vividness.In the possibility dimension,collective future events are higher than individual future events.In the emotional arousal,detail and vividness,the positive future events of individuals are significantly higher than those of collective future events,but there is no significant difference in risk events.On the basis of study 1,the variable of temporal distance was added in study 2A,which was divided into 4 temporal distances,namely 1 week later,1 year later,5-10 years later and 40 years later.The subjects were asked to imagine the individual future and China’s future under the four temporal distances respectively,the main purpose of which was to explore the influence of temporal distance on the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and collective future thought.The results show that in terms of the number of future events,the main effect and interaction between emotional valence and temporal distance are significant in both individual future thought and collective future thought,but they have different manifestations.The difference in temporal distance between individual future events and collective future events is also reflected in the degree of emotional arousal,details,vividness and importance,which is reflected in that individual future events have great changes at different temporal distances,but collective future thought keeps relatively stable at different temporal distances.Study 1 and study 2A only explored the emotional cognitive bias of collective future thought in China.On this basis,study 2B added two other imagined groups,family’s future and the America’s future,to explore the emotional cognitive bias of collective future thought more comprehensively.The repeated measure ANOVA analysis showed that: in terms of the number of future events,the main effect of imagined group and the main effect of emotional valence were significantly different,and the interaction between them was significant.The differences between individual future events and different collective future events are also reflected in the possibility,emotional arousal,details,vividness and importance.Overall,it is concluded that(1)In the context of Chinese culture,individual future thought is positivity bias,and China’s future thought is positivity bias.The differences between the emotionalcognitive bias of individual future and the emotional cognitive bias of China’s future are reflected in the possibility,emotional arousal,details and vividness.Generally speaking,individuals believe that future events in China are more likely to occur,but individuals are more likely to imagine higher arousal,more details and more vivid individual future positive events.(2)The positivity bias of individual future thought will be affected by temporal distance,showing a trend of first rising and then falling.After 5-10 years(between 20-30 years old),it will be a peak;The positive bias of China’s future thought also is influenced by temporal distance,which will increase as temporal distance increases,but may gradually stabilize.The influence of temporal distance on the emotional cognitive bias of individual future thought and China’s future thought is also reflected in emotional arousal,detail,vividness and importance.Compared with China’s future,individual future events will have greater changes at different temporal distance,that is,positive events will have higher emotional arousal,more details,more vividness and more importance.China’s future is relatively stable.(3)The family’s future thought is a positivity bias,and the positivity bias of the family’s future thought is equivalent to that of the China’s future thought,but the positivity bias of the family’s future thought is lower than that of the individual future thought.Individuals tend to believe that positive events in the family future are more likely to happen,more detailed,more vivid and more important than negative events.(4)There is no emotional cognitive bias in the America’s future thought,and compared with other groups,individuals tend to believe that positive events in the America’s future thought are more difficult to happen,less arousing,less detailed,less vivid and less important,and negative events have higher emotional arousal and more details than positive events.