HWB Seminar, Professor Andy Macleod

Prospection (future-directed thinking) and emotional disorders

Professor Andy Macleod, RHUL

Prospection – the ability to mentally represent what might happen in the future – is fundamentally connected to emotional well-being and mental health.  This talk will review the link between emotional disorders and various aspects of how people think about the future.  Aspects covered will include predicting what will happen to oneself in the future, mentally simulating future outcomes, setting personal goals and forming plans of action to achieve goals. The studies reviewed will show that emotional disorders are characterised by disruptions to future-directed thinking across these different domains and that depression and anxiety show distinct, problematic patterns of prospection.   Understanding alterations in thinking about the future can offer a different perspective in thinking about anxiety and depression, and can provide opportunities to develop treatments and strategies that focus on how people think about the future, as opposed to the past or the present.