The ability to imagine and simulate events that may happen in the future has been studied in several related but independent research areas (e.g., episodic future thinking, mind-wandering, prospective memory), with a newly emerging field of involuntary future thinking focusing primarily on the spontaneous occurrence of such thoughts. In this article, we review evidence from these diverse fields to address important questions about why do people think about the future, what are the typical and most frequent contents of such thoughts, and how do these thoughts occur (are they spontaneous or constructed deliberately). Results of the literature review provide support for the pragmatic theory of prospection, by showing that when people engage in prospective thought naturally, without being explicitly instructed to do so, they predominantly think about their upcoming tasks and planned activities instead of simulating plausible but novel hypothetical scenarios. Moreover, prospective thoughts are more often spontaneous than deliberate and effortful, and their occurrence seems to increase the likelihood of planned activities being completed in the future. The findings are discussed in the context of a new “pragmatic dual process account” of future thinking, and new avenues for future research on prospection are outlined.

想象和模拟未来可能发生的事件的能力已经在几个相关但独立的研究领域中进行了研究（例如，情节性的未来思维，思维游荡，前瞻性记忆），非自愿的未来思维的新兴领域主要集中在这种思想的自发发生。在本文中，我们将回顾来自这些不同领域的证据，以解决有关人们为何思考未来，此类思想的典型和最常见内容是什么以及如何应对的重要问题。这些想法是否发生（它们是自发的还是故意构造的）。文献综述的结果为实用的探矿理论提供了支持，该研究表明，当人们自然地从事前瞻性思想而未得到明确指示时，他们主要考虑的是即将到来的任务和计划中的活动，而不是模拟似是而非但新颖的假设场景。此外，前瞻性想法通常是自发性的，而不是刻意和费力的，并且它们的出现似乎增加了计划中的活动在将来完成的可能性。在未来思维的一个新的“务实的双重过程说明”的背景下讨论了这些发现，并为未来的勘探研究概述了新的途径。