We investigated the contributions of familiarity of setting, self-relevance and self-projection in time to episodic future thinking. The role of familiarity of setting was assessed, in Experiment 1, by comparing episodic future thoughts to autobiographical future events supposed to occur in unfamiliar settings. The role of self-relevance was assessed, in Experiment 2, by comparing episodic future thoughts to future events involving familiar others. The role of self-projection in time was assessed, in both Experiments, by comparing episodic future thoughts to autobiographical (...) events that were not temporal in nature. Results indicated that episodic future thoughts were more clearly represented than autobiographical future events occurring in unfamiliar setting and future events involving familiar others. Our results also revealed that episodic future thoughts were indistinguishable from autobiographical atemporal events with respect to both subjective and objective detail ratings. These results suggest that future and atemporal events are mentally represented in a similar way. (shrink)

Little is known about the impact of success and failure events on age-related changes in affect states and, particularly, in self-esteem levels. To fill this gap in the literature, in the present study changes in affect and self-esteem in 100 young (19 - 30 years) and 102 older adults (65-81 years) were assessed after participants experienced success and failure in a demanding cognitive task. Overall, the success-failure manipulation induced changes on affect states and on state self-esteem, not on trait self-esteem. (...) Regarding age differences, older and young adults were affected to the same extent by experiences of successes and failures. Theoretical considerations of the empirical findings are provided in the general discussion. (shrink)