Loyal past, fickle future: The effects of temporal thinking on consumers' variety-seeking behaviors

In two studies, we investigated the effect of temporal thinking (past thinking vs. future thinking) on variety-seeking behaviors. In Study 1, 228 Chinese college students were recruited as participants, and they chose promotional items from a simulated supermarket in a behavioral laboratory. The findings indicated that, compared to participants who were not in a temporal-thinking condition, when participants had recalled a past event, they chose items from fewer categories in the promotional gift-selection task, and those who had imagined a future event chose from more categories. We uncovered that familiarity seeking associated with past thinking and novelty seeking associated with future thinking were the underlying mechanisms that presented two different psychological paths. However, in a real-choice task, the temporal-thinking effect was attenuated by self-irrelevant thinking (Study 2, 272 Chinese college students recruited as participants). We also found the temporal distance showed no influence on the temporal-thinking effect, regardless of whether the time cues were given (Study 1) or not given (Study 2).