Direct Accessibility and the Phenomenological Characteristics of Future Thinking Associated with Depressive Symptoms: Examining the Roles of Contrast Avoidance and Memories of the Future

Depression is characterized by reduced future thinking specificity, yet the retrieval processes underlying this impairment remain unclear. Building on parallels between future thinking and autobiographical memory, we examined whether depressive symptoms are differentially associated with direct versus generative retrieval of specific and categoric future events, and whether contrast avoidance (i.e., maintaining a negative mood to avoid a sudden negative emotional shift) contributes to these patterns. In Study 1 (N = 80) and Study 2 (N = 113), Japanese adults completed a future thinking task in which they imagined personally-relevant future events for positive and negative cue words, classified each retrieval as direct or generative, and rated phenomenological characteristics. Across studies, depressive symptom severity was consistently associated with more frequent direct retrieval of negative categoric future thinking and less frequent direct retrieval of positive specific future thinking. Depressed individuals also reported lower emotional valence, likelihood, and similarity with past events for positive future thinking, suggesting limited memory resources for generating plausible positive events. In Study 2, a higher propensity for emotional contrast avoidance was linked to increased retrieval of negative categoric future thinking and decreased retrieval of positive specific future thinking. These findings extend depression-related alteration of accessibility from autobiographical memory to future thinking, suggesting common underlying knowledge structures. Increased accessibility to negative categoric futures and reduced accessibility to positive specific futures may be a pathological process in depressed individuals, with contrast avoidance potentially maintaining these biases.