positive mental time travel

Mental time travel is a great decision-making tool — this is how to use it

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When the future seems largely unpredictable, is there anything you can do to prepare for it?

“Yes!” says futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal . All you need to do is to tap into your imagination and envision all your potential futures — using what she calls “futures thinking.” 

“Futures thinking isn’t a superpower, and you don’t have to fix everything or save everyone,” McGonigal writes in her new book called Imaginable . “But futures thinking is an incredibly useful, practical tool to prepare your mind to adapt faster to new challenges, build hope and resilience, reduce anxiety and depression, and inspire you to take actions today that set yourself up for future happiness and success.”

Her book draws on the latest research in psychology and neuroscience to show you how to train your mind to think the unthinkable. In this excerpt, you’ll get a taste of how you can start thinking like a futurist — and create a better future for yourself. 

For the next 30 seconds, I want you to imagine yourself waking up tomorrow morning. Try to picture it in your mind or describe it to yourself as clearly as possible. 

These questions may help make your imagined scene clearer. What room or space are you in? What wakes you up — an alarm, the sunlight, someone nudging you or calling you? Is it light out or still dark? Is there anyone with you? What are you wearing? What kind of mood are you in? And what’s the very first thing you do now that you’re awake?

Keep imagining your tomorrow morning until you have a clear answer to all of these questions.

This quick mental time trip you just took is an example of a highly imaginable future — it was likely quite easy for you to envision, with plenty of vivid details.

Now let’s try something more challenging. For the next 30 seconds, I want you to imagine yourself waking up one year from today. 

Again, try to envision this as clearly as possible. Feel free to change as many or as few details as you want from the first scene you imagined. Are you somewhere different? Are you physically changed? What’s your mood? Do you have a different morning habit? What might that new habit be?

Keep imagining your morning one year from now until you have answers to all of these questions — even the harder ones. Notice how easily and automatically ideas came to you, or how hard you had to work to come up with details.

If you’re having difficulty imagining life 10 years from now, write down a description of what you imagine. It can be easier to think about the future with words rather than with mental images.

Now let’s try one more act of imagination. This time, I want you to imagine yourself waking up 10 years from today.

Take as long as you need to come up with a vivid and plausible image — of yourself, of the space that you’re in, and who might be with you. Where are you? What’s around you? What do you see, hear, smell, and feel? What’s the first thing on your mind when you wake up? What do you have planned for the day? How are you physically different?

Try not to make this future scene a total fantasy; stay grounded in what you feel is genuinely realistic and possible for you. If you’re having difficulty, write down a description of what you imagine. Sometimes, it’s easier to think about the future with words rather than with mental images.

You’ll probably find that 10 years is a trickier challenge compared with one year. Why? You’ve never been 10 years older than you are now, so your brain doesn’t know what to expect. Plus, there’s so much opportunity for things to change in a decade — your body, relationships, life circumstances, physical environment.

Your brain intuitively grasps this unknowability, so instead of confidently projecting one possibility, it opens up a blank space for you to consider multiple possibilities. You have to start making intentional choices about what you want to imagine in your future — you have to fill in the blanks.

“Episodic future thinking” or EFT is often described as “mental time travel” — your brain is working to help you see and feel the future as clearly and vividly as if you were already there.

Filling in the blanks takes considerable effort. But that’s precisely why this kind of imagination is so powerful. Instead of simply remembering what it knows, your brain has to invent a new possibility. It draws on past experiences, current hopes and fears, and your intuitions about what might possibly change in 10 years.

Then, after you’ve made this new memory, something amazing happens: What was previously unimaginable to your brain is now imaginable. You can revisit this new memory whenever you want and examine how it makes you feel. Does it spark positive or negative emotions? These pre-feelings can help you decide: Should you change what you’re doing today to make this future more or less likely? And because you invented this memory, you can change it whenever you want.

Scientists call this form of imagination “episodic future thinking,” or EFT. EFT is often described as a kind of “mental time travel” because your brain is working to help you see and feel the future as clearly and vividly as if you were already there.

EFT isn’t an escape from reality. It’s a way of playing with reality, to discover risks and opportunities you might not have considered. EFT is not a daydream in which you fantasize about waking up in a world where your problems are magically solved. It is a way of connecting who you are today with what you might really feel and do in the future.

An important element of imagination training is to fill your brain with what I call “clues to the future,” concrete examples of new ideas that might shape how your future turns out.

Because EFT allows us to pre-feel different possible futures, it’s a powerful decision-making, planning and motivational tool. It helps us decide: Is this a world I want to wake up in? What do I need to do to be ready for it? Should I change what I’m doing today to make this future more or less likely?

According to fMRI studies, EFT involves heightened activity and increased connectivity between 11 distinct brain regions. Compare this to remembering a past event, which activates 6 of the 11 regions of the brain.

There are three major kinds of sense making that happen when you engage in mental time travel to your future. First, your brain has to do what cognitive scientists call “scene construction” — mentally building the future world. Think of this as crafting the stage set, cast and props for a theatrical play.

During EFT, your brain goes on a hunt for realistic details and plausible ideas. To do this, it activates the hippocampus , the seat of memory and learning, and digs through your memories, plus any other facts and ideas you’ve stored away. Depending on what kind of future you’re imagining, the hippocampus identifies the most relevant stuff and retrieves and recombines it into a new scene.

Whatever you see in your future will always come from information your brain has already perceived and processed. Ideally, as you get better at imagining the unimaginable, you’ll incorporate not just obvious ideas and events but also surprising things that could be important in your future.

Another important part of imagination training is to try out new behaviors that could prove useful in the future. I call these micro-actions — taking no more than five minutes to do something today you’ve never done before.

That’s why an important element of imagination training is to fill your brain with what I call “clues to the future,” concrete examples of new ideas that might shape how your future turns out. When you have a hippocampus full of clues, your brain will have better data to draw on, and the scenes you construct will be way more interesting.

After scene construction, your brain starts to do what cognitive scientists call “opportunity detection.” Here, you look for ways to fulfill your needs and achieve your goals. For example: If you predict you will be hungry when you wake up in 10 years, what will future you eat? If you imagine yourself lonely when you wake up, who will future you try to connect with? Opportunity detection is like an actor showing up for rehearsal and asking, “What’s my motivation?” In other words: What do you want in this scene?

To figure this out, your brain fires up the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a region that’s heavily used whenever you set goals and track your progress. Like the hippocampus, the vmPFC can suggest any goals you’ve had or previously considered. One of the most interesting things about EFT is that the motivations that pop into your mind first are likely to be closely linked to your deepest values and most essential needs, like always learning something new, helping others, pushing yourself to do brave things, taking care of your family, being creative, or  putting new ideas or art into the world.

But you still have to figure out the best way for future you to achieve these future goals. So then the putamen , also part of the motivation and reward system, kicks in. The putamen helps keep track of which specific actions and behaviors typically lead to positive results for you. It’s the part of your brain that knows things like “I feel better when I get some fresh air”; “I make my mom happy when I text her back right away”; “If I’m having a bad day, cooking helps”; or “If I don’t stand up for myself in the moment, I’ll beat myself up about it later.”

There are real benefits to intentionally and carefully imagining futures that frighten you. This can help you do the important work of getting ready for anything — even things you’d rather not experience.

The putamen is like a reality check on your future imagination. Since the putamen is trained on real experiences, the future actions it suggests will be heavily influenced by strategies that worked for you in the past. That’s why another important part of imagination training is to try out new behaviors that could prove useful in the future. I call these micro-actions — taking no more than five minutes to do something today you’ve never done before. When you experiment with micro-actions, you expand what your putamen considers realistic behavior.

Finally, as your brain works to transport you to the future, feelings will kick in. The insula and amygdala , emotion centers in the brain, fire up to give you a preview of how you might feel in the future — excited, disappointed, hopeful, afraid, proud, jealous, joyful, sad, curious, bored, embarrassed, relieved, loved, lonely, awed, confused, stressed out, free or more. These emotions give you important information and help you decide: Is this a future I want to wake up in? Should I take actions today to make this future more or less likely?

Crucially, these are real feelings. Studies show that the emotions you experience during EFT can be just as psychologically powerful as emotions experienced in the present. This is one reason why many of us prefer to imagine best-case-scenario futures and avoid imagining the futures that scare us.

But there are real benefits to intentionally and carefully imagining futures that frighten you. This can help you do the important work of getting ready for anything — even things you’d rather not think about, let alone actually experience, someday.

Excerpted from the new book Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal. Copyright © 2022 by Jane McGonigal. Used by permission of Spiegel & Grau LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Watch her TED Talk here:

About the author

Jane McGonigal is a future forecaster and world-renowned designer of alternate reality games designed to improve real lives and solve real problems. She is the Director of Games Research & Development at the Institute for the Future and currently teaches the course “How to Think Like a Futurist” at Stanford University, as well as serving as the lead instructor for the Institute for the Future’s series on the Coursera platform. She is The New York Times bestselling author of the books "Reality Is Broken" and "SuperBetter" and the new book "Unimaginable." Her innovative games and ideas have been recognized by the World Economic Forum, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, O Magazine and the New York Times, among others.

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Is Mental Time Travel Good for Us?

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• Mindfulness
• Psychological Science

In our fast-paced modern lives, we are increasingly encouraged to stop and focus on the present. And there are tangible advantages.

Studies on the effects of mindfulness and meditation  — practices that gear people’s cognitive capacities towards the present moment — have pointed to reduced stress, increased focus and less emotional reactivity.

As a result, mindfulness has become a billion-dollar industry that promises to alleviate all manner of psychological ills.

However, Anna-Lisa Cohen, a psychology professor at Yeshiva University in New York, says that while there is concrete evidence pointing to the positive changes that mindfulness can bring about, we shouldn’t overlook other tools.

“While there is scientific evidence that mindfulness and meditation do lead to positive changes in our brains and biology, especially for stress reduction,” Cohen says, “I think it is also important to carve out space in the public forum to acknowledge the new science on the benefits of doing the opposite.”

Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Discover

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How To Use Mental Time Travel To Enhance Well-Being

Thinking about people, places and events beyond the present can be a happiness-inducing exercise, if done properly..

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | December 20, 2023

A new article published in Personality and Social Psychology Review examines the benefits of “mental time travel,” referring to the mind’s ability to mentally reconstruct past experiences or imagine future events.

Researchers found that mental time travel could enhance self-affirmation, which refers to consciously highlighting and reinforcing one's positive attributes, values, abilities or self-beliefs. Self-affirming is essential to mental well-being and happiness, especially when one experiences self-criticism or external sources of invalidation.

Here are two mental time travel methods that enhance our well-being, according to the study.

1. Self-Prospection

Self-prospection is a mental time travel technique, referring to the process of imagining future events concerning oneself. It involves mental simulations or projections about future experiences, goals, desires and potential life outcomes. 

Researchers found that self-prospection can enhance the three core components of well-being, which include:

• Self-esteem. Self-esteem is the evaluative component of self-affirmation and measures the extent to which individuals like and value themselves. Researchers suggest that individuals tend to assign more idealistic characteristics to their future selves while adopting a more pragmatic view of their present self, shaped by available opportunities and practical limitations. Thus, this future self is allowed to “dream big” while the present self may be more inhibited. Additionally, a 2011 study found that individuals tend to think of their future selves as more agreeable, conscientious, open and having higher self-esteem. Overall, future selves are consistently viewed in a positive light, which can improve one’s self-esteem in the present.
• Coherence. Coherence is the cognitive component of self-affirmation, which refers to being able to make sense of life events and find meaning in them. Researchers found that using self-prospection, individuals gain a clearer understanding of themselves and their goals. When mentally projecting into the distant future, the focus shifts from fleeting everyday events to broader aspects of one’s identity, values, beliefs and life goals, creating a coherent inner narrative of one’s life. A 2015 study found that individuals envisioning their future selves felt that these projections truly reflected their identity and highlighted positive aspects of who they were, allowing them to find meaningful connections between their present and future.
• Control . A sense of control is the executive, action-oriented component of self-affirmation, referring to a feeling of agency and confidence in one’s ability to initiate and carry out goal-directed actions. Self-prospection enhances self-affirmation by reinforcing the belief that one’s actions and their outcomes stem from their own will and fall within their control. A 2017 study found that the further into the future one mentally travels, the more they attribute the outcomes of important milestones to their own willpower. This sense of temporal distance seems to magnify the role of personal determination in shaping life outcomes and empowers individuals to pursue envisioned futures, fortifying their commitment to these desired outcomes. 

2. Nostalgia

Another mental time travel technique involves tapping into nostalgia and reflecting on past events, re-experiencing positive emotions and gaining insight about oneself. Nostalgia improves the core tenets of self-affirmation in the following ways:

• Self-esteem. Nostalgia enhances self-esteem by focusing on positive and personally meaningful past events. This allows individuals to re-experience positive aspects of themselves and draw upon their life stories as a reminder of their strengths and capabilities. Studies involving experimentally induced nostalgia consistently demonstrate elevated self-esteem as a result.
• Coherence. Researchers suggest that mental time travel isn't just about revisiting the past. It constructs and sustains our inner storyline, allowing us to make sense of the story of our lives. Past events are reminders of defining moments that strengthen our sense of self-identity and meaning in life, helping us find causation for life events and derive valuable insights from them. Nostalgic recollections also often center on significant life events shared with close connections such as family, friends or romantic partners and revolve around cultural rituals or symbolic family traditions. Recalling such events is highly self-affirming as close relationships are significant sources of meaning in life . 
• Control . Nostalgia also adds to a sense of control and self-belief, strengthening the motivation to pursue important life goals. For instance, research shows that nostalgia, by providing a sense of energy and vitality, increases one’s faith in one’s social competence, which in turn inspires them to pursue social goals such as establishing successful social relationships. 

In harnessing the power of mental time travel for self-affirmation, it's crucial to navigate it with intention. The key lies in drawing strength from mental journeys into the past and the future without losing sight of the present and using this inspiration to take action on one’s goals and dreams.

A similar version of this article also appears on Forbes.com, here .

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Researchers wanted to see if practicing “mental time travel” could make people happier. They found that after imagining specific positive future events every day for two weeks, people had greater increases in well-being than did people who’d imagined either negative or neutral events. So, according to the researchers, if you want to give yourself a boost of happiness, try to “imagine, in the most precise way, four positive events that could reasonably happen to you tomorrow.” This can include all kinds of events, “from simple everyday pleasures to very important positive events.” —Laura Saslow

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How Mental Time Travel Helps You Make Better Decisions

• By Lakeisha Ethans
• Published on February 22, 2023
• Last modified May 21, 2023

Mental time travel is like a superpower that can help you get through some hard times, especially when it comes to decision-making. Mental time travel is the ability to simulate past and future events mentally. It’s the process of mentally reliving past experiences or imagining future scenarios. Mental time travel can positively impact decision-making by allowing individuals to reflect on past experiences and learn from them.

Through this trick, you can also consider the future consequences of your actions. By analyzing the future, you can decide whether some actions are good for you or not. Individuals can mentally travel to the past to recall past experiences, emotions, and decisions to help inform their present and future choices. For example, someone who has had a bad experience with a specific type of food may avoid it in the future.

This is done to avoid the same negative outcome they stumbled upon in the past. Similarly, mental time travel to the future can help individuals consider potential consequences and make more informed decisions. Someone considering a job offer may imagine what their life would be like if they took the job. Mental time travel can be a valuable tool for individuals looking to make better decisions by allowing them to reflect. By combining the lessons of the past with the considerations of the future, individuals can make more informed and well-thought-out decision-making.

How Does Mental Time Travel Helps You Make Better Decisions?

1.      By Reflecting on Your Past, You Make Better Decisions in the Future

As mentioned before, reflecting on the past is one of the best ways to improve your decision-making skills. By doing so, individuals can understand their past actions, emotions, and thought processes that led to specific outcomes. This understanding can help them make better decisions in the future by avoiding similar mistakes and utilizing successful strategies. By analyzing what worked and didn’t, individuals can apply this knowledge to make more informed and effective decisions in the future.

Reflecting on past experiences can help individuals learn from their mistakes and make more informed decisions in the future. Individuals can also process and work through negative emotions and experiences by reflecting on the past, leading to greater emotional well-being. It can also aid in personal growth and help them identify behavioral patterns.

2.      It Helps You Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

When you engage in mental time travel and imagine potential future outcomes, you simulate different scenarios and consider each option’s consequences. Mental time travel can improve decision-making by helping you anticipate the possible consequences of different options. By imagining different future outcomes, you can weigh the pros and cons of each decision and make a more informed choice.

For example, if you are considering taking a new job, mental time travel can help you imagine what life would be like in the new role. By doing so, you can make a more informed choice that aligns with your values, goals, and long-term plans. Mental time travel can also help you consider alternative perspectives and see a situation from multiple angles.

This can be particularly helpful when making decisions that impact others, as it can encourage empathy and help you consider the impact of your choices on others. And this is not even a complicated task. You’ll need to be consistent and have the wish to learn how to use this tool. But mental time travel is very easy to get the hang on. So, you’ll get better at making decisions in no time.

3.      It Helps You Learn How to Manage Your Emotions While Making Decisions

Mental time travel can help you learn how to manage your emotions by allowing you to reflect or even imagine future possibilities. You can focus on positive past experiences or envision a positive future to increase feelings of hope and optimism. This trick will also help reduce anxiety and stress.

This emotional regulation can help you make clear-headed decisions and avoid impulsive choices driven by negative emotions. For example, mental time travel can help you imagine a positive outcome if you feel overwhelmed or anxious about a situation. Instead of stressing about all the potential negative consequences, you can focus on one good one. This can boost your confidence and resilience.

Similarly, mental time travel can help you recall past successes and accomplishments if you feel down or discouraged. Ultimately, you’ll be able to regain a sense of perspective and improve your mood. In this way, mental time travel is a valuable tool for emotional regulation. It can help you learn how to manage your emotions more effectively, which will help you make better decisions.

4.      It Encourages Goal Setting at Part of Your Decision-Making

Mental time travel can be a powerful tool for goal setting and motivation . By visualizing your desired future and imagining what you want to achieve, you can create a clear picture of what you want to accomplish. This visualization can be a source of motivation and inspiration, encouraging you to set and work towards achievable goals. If you’re starting your own business, mental time travel can help you visualize what success in that venture would look like.

Imagine every little detail, from the type of business you build to the impact you want to make. This visualization can then serve as a roadmap, guiding you toward your goal and providing motivation along the way.

Visualizing your desired future can help you identify potential obstacles and challenges and develop a plan to overcome them. Doing so can increase your chances of success and improve your ability to achieve your goals. When you visualize your desired future and imagine what you want to achieve, you can create a clear picture of your goals. This will motivate you to work towards them, even when you feel like giving up.

5.      It Helps Build Resilience and Self-Awareness

Mental time travel is a pretty versatile tool. Amongst other things, it can help you build resilience and self-awareness. By reflecting on past experiences, you can better understand your values, goals, and tendencies, which can increase self-awareness. This increased self-awareness can help guide your decisions and ensure that they align with what is important to you.

Reflecting on your past can help you identify patterns and behaviors that no longer serve you. That way, you can make the changes necessary to live a happier, better life. Mental time travel can also help build resilience by allowing you to anticipate the potential consequences of different options.

By imagining different future outcomes, you can weigh the pros and cons of each decision and make a more informed choice. This can increase your confidence and ability to cope with challenges and setbacks and help you bounce back more quickly from difficult situations.

6.      You Decision-Making Will Promote a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is a belief that your abilities and qualities can be developed and improved through effort and dedication. Using mental time travel, you can reflect on past experiences and imagine future possibilities. You can adopt a more optimistic outlook and focus on growth and development. By reflecting on past challenges and imagining how you could have handled them differently, you can identify areas for growth and improvement.

This can help you develop a more proactive and adaptive approach and increase your chances of success in the future. Imagining future possibilities with mental time travel can help you focus on growth and development. You can develop a better outlook by visualizing your desired future and considering the steps necessary to achieve it. That way, you’ll increase your chances of success.

Visualizing the benefits of your hard work and effort is also a great way to stay motivated, even when things aren’t going your way. Your abilities and qualities can be developed and improved. When you believe that, you are more likely to approach challenges as opportunities for growth rather than as insurmountable obstacles. This positive outlook can help you bounce back from setbacks more quickly and increase your overall well-being.

7.      It Increases Gratitude

Gratitude is one of the most important qualities if you want to be emotionally balanced. And mental travel can help you achieve it. When you reflect on past experiences with mental time travel, you can recall instances where you received help from others. Or maybe you’ll remember when others helped you overcome challenges or achieved goals.

By recognizing these blessings , you can develop a greater appreciation for what you have and feel more grateful for your experiences. Mental time travel can also help you focus on the present moment and appreciate what you have in the present. When you think about the future, you can become preoccupied with what you don’t have or hope to have. However, mental time travel can help you shift your focus to the present moment.

It can encourage you to appreciate what you have in your life right now. It can also help you cultivate a positive outlook and an appreciation for the journey rather than just the destination. You can develop greater contentment by reflecting on your experiences and appreciating your steps to get where you are. You’ll find reasons to be grateful even if you have not achieved your goals.

Final Thoughts on How Mental Time Travel Helps You Make Better Decisions

Mental time travel is a unique tool to help you make better decisions. Visualizing potential future outcomes, reflecting on past experiences, and considering the impact of your choices, are all essential tools. And they can help you make informed decisions that align with your goals and values.

Mental time travel helps you manage your emotions, build resilience, and develop a growth mindset. If you start practicing it, you’ll be able to approach all challenges and opportunities with confidence and optimism. Mental time travel can increase gratitude and appreciation by reminding you of past blessings and encouraging you to focus on the present moment.

This not only helps enable better decision-making, but also contributes to your overall well-being and happiness. Whether you’re facing a personal or professional challenge, mental time travel can help you make better decisions. Ultimately, you’ll be able to achieve your goals and live a more fulfilling life.

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About the Author

Lakeisha Ethans

Lakeisha Ethans is a compassionate mom of two who believes in the power of positivity, kindness, and empathy to create a positive change in the world. As a Contributing Writer at Power of Positivity, Lakeisha strives to make a difference through her content. Lakeisha holds a degree in Accounting and Business Management and has also pursued her interest in holistic health and wellness by obtaining a certificate in Yoga and Ayurveda.

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Is Mental Time Travel Good For Us?

Forget the “be here now” concept, which stresses focus on the present. allowing your mind to wander freely has its own benefits..

In our fast-paced modern lives, we are increasingly encouraged to stop and focus on the present. And there are tangible advantages.

Studies on the effects of mindfulness and meditation — practices that gear people’s cognitive capacities towards the present moment — have pointed to reduced stress, increased focus and less emotional reactivity.

As a result, mindfulness has become a billion-dollar industry that promises to alleviate all manner of psychological ills.

However, Anna-Lisa Cohen, a psychology professor at Yeshiva University in New York, says that while there is concrete evidence pointing to the positive changes that mindfulness can bring about, we shouldn’t overlook other tools.

“While there is scientific evidence that mindfulness and meditation do lead to positive changes in our brains and biology, especially for stress reduction,” Cohen says, “I think it is also important to carve out space in the public forum to acknowledge the new science on the benefits of doing the opposite.”

What Is Mental Time Travel?

Cohen points to recent research on “self-projection,” better known as “mental time travel.” In short, this is our unique ability to reflect on past experiences and project ourselves into the future.

“Our ability to disengage from the present and immerse ourselves in imaginary worlds is one of our most extraordinary gifts as humans and underlies some of our greatest accomplishments,” she says.

Being present at pivotal moments obviously has its values: Keeping the mind from wandering could be the difference between disaster and a job well-done, especially for a brain surgeon or air-traffic controller.

But researchers are becoming increasingly aware that our default cognitive state — what we know as daydreaming — consists largely of being detached from the present moment. And given the frequency with which some of us wander in our thoughts, it’s likely that this mode of thinking serves an important role in our day-to-day lives. 

When we allow this to happen and separate from the present, Cohen says, we unlock a form of cognitive flexibility that’s otherwise unavailable.

“Now the imagination is involved. Psychological barriers are lowered. Suddenly, ideas, concepts and possibilities that we might not have considered have a better chance of coming to mind. There is a fluidity to our thinking,” she says.

Read More: Is There a Particle That Can Travel Back in Time?

The Evolution of the Wandering Mind

A 2017 study in Psychological Science found that we spend an astonishing 30 to 50 percent of our waking hours detached from the present moment.

In another study , published in 2015, researchers attempted to figure out the general contents of mind wandering episodes. Their results show that when people were mind wandering, thoughts were most often oriented toward the future and were goal-related.

Research psychologists generally agree that the degree to which humans can separate from the present moment and contemplate things beyond our immediate senses is a unique feature of our species.

Evolutionary psychologists Thomas Suddendorf and Micheal Corballis, for example, have argued that the cognitive development of mental time travel was a crucial step in the evolutionary success of our species.

With it, we can imagine mutually exclusive possible futures. We can make plans and contingencies in case they go awry. Just ask the insurance industry.

Read More: A Major Time Travel Perk May Be Technically Impossible

When Is Mind Wandering Too Much?

“No other nonhuman animals look further back into the past, or further into the future,” says Cohen.

But while this ability has underlined some of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, it can also bring about a host of unwieldy emotions — some of which, like regret, anxiety and embarrassment, we might want to avoid.

Because we can imagine what should have been done otherwise, or all the ways in which something can go wrong, it's inevitable: If we are too focused on the past or the future, this could be destructive to our well-being.

And here, it comes full circle back to mindfulness and being present.

For the overly active mind wanderer, the overthinker, a little bit of mindfulness might be the right way to balance the psychological systems that have set us up for evolutionary success.

After all, if you are forever somewhere else, you might miss the nuances of the moment — and the things that make planning for a future worthwhile.

Read More: What Is the Grandfather Paradox of Time Travel?

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How Mental Time Travel Can Make Us Better People

Kindness lives in the future-present.

• By Katherine Harmon Courage
• December 23, 2022

I n late summer 1978, tensions broiled between then Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. For nearly two weeks, United States President Jimmy Carter and scores of advisors struggled to help the leaders reach an agreement that would end decades of fighting between the two countries. The high-stakes meeting at Camp David seemed to have crumpled under the weight of the conflict as Begin reportedly called off negotiations and asked President Carter to call him a car.

While Begin was packing up to go—and leave behind the possibility of regional detente—President Carter brought in eight copies of a photograph of the three leaders together. On each he had written the name of one of Begin’s grandchildren and a note about his own hope for peace in the future.

Upon looking over these inscriptions, Begin’s countenance changed. He “put his bags down, and he said, ‘Mr. President, I’ll make one last try,’” recalled former Domestic Affairs Advisor Stuart Eizenstat in 2018. Begin then acquiesced on a central point of contention, and the Camp David Accord was reached, resulting in a formal treaty that has held ever since.

Mental time travel might help us to circumvent impulsive choices or opportunistic motivation.

What changed in Begin’s mind in that instant? According to researchers Olga Maria Klimecki-Lenz, Patricia Cernadas Curotto, and their colleagues, it was an opportunity for Begin to think about the future—if even for just a fleeting moment—that shifted his approach, like a change in weather, to orient toward cooperation. At least that was their working hypothesis.

Plenty of research has shown that thinking about the future can shift our intentions to behave better, from planning to save more money for retirement to helping out in a theoretical situation.

But do these intentions translate to a change in our behavior ? This is what Klimecki-Lenz, who is a neuroscientist and psychologist, as well as a practicing mediator who has worked with diplomats and heads of state, and Cernadas Curotto, a psychology researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and their colleagues set out to answer through a study published earlier this year . 1

To probe the theory, they asked study participants to spend just one minute thinking of either as many things as possible that might happen to them in the next year or as many animals as they could. Next each participant played the Zurich Prosocial Game . In the game, the players race against a clock to navigate through mazes and score points by collecting treasures. On the screen they can see another “player” navigating different paths to different treasures. As obstacles appear before the players, the participant has the ability—but not the instruction—to help remove them for the other player. Those who had spent their fleeting minute thinking about the future helped the other player much more often, suggesting that just a brief mental trip into the future can actually make people behave more generously toward others.

In a world so rife with strife—personal and political—such a simple mental exercise seems incredibly alluring. We checked in with Klimecki-Lenz and Cernadas Curotto to learn more.

In your recent study, you asked participants to think about the future for just one minute. And they could think about things that were positive, negative, or just neutral. Can such a short mental exercise really impact how we behave?

Klimecki-Lenz: We hoped it would impact participants’ behavior, but we were not sure. So when the results came in, we were surprised ourselves to find that the effect was so clear. Yes, our research shows that just one minute of future thinking is enough to promote prosocial behavior.

I think this is a powerful message for those wanting to incite prosocial action in contexts where there is little time. We also know from conflict research, that indirect interventions, i.e. interventions that do not obviously target any behaviors or interpersonal relations, can bring about the most change. So thinking about the future is a powerful way to promote prosocial behavior in an indirect way.

Cernadas Curotto: Further research is needed to confirm our findings—and also to observe whether these effects persist.

Why might this sort of exercise of thinking about the future induce people to act more prosocially?

Klimecki-Lenz: As to the why, we do not know yet, but there are a few ideas that might be worthwhile to test. A first hint is found in our cross-sectional data showing that positive future oriented thoughts are associated with more prosocial behavior. It thus seems that a positive outlook to the future is helpful. We also know from other research that excessive worry or rumination are oftentimes not very productive. So maybe it is indeed a positive orientation toward the future. At the same time, thinking about the future in general may make one’s current needs seem less important. Again, this is also a hypothesis and it would be worthwhile to test it.

Cernadas Curotto: Some researchers suggest that mental time travel might help us to circumvent impulsive choices or opportunistic motivation. Past research has shown that generating mental simulations could foster prosocial intentions through mechanisms such as perspective-taking.

As a human species we advance through cooperation and altruism.

In parallel, it has been proposed that both mental simulations (future thinking and perspective-taking) rely on common regions of the brain. Thus, if we imagine a future scene, these brain regions are recruited, and this might facilitate other types of mental simulations such as viewing others’ mental states.

What are the implications for these findings, as we think about our own interactions and lives?

Klimecki-Lenz: If we think about the future more often, we will become more likely to help each other. It also means that if we want others to behave in a more prosocial way, it may help to invite them to think about the future. This can apply to friends, family members, colleagues, and so forth.

Do you see limitations of scale for applying this sort of approach to larger societal problems or conflicts?

Klimecki-Lenz: Yes, so far it is a hypothesis that thinking about the future in larger societal problems or conflicts can bring about more prosocial behavior. Our results encourage future research in this direction. I hope that future studies will give us insights into when and how future thinking can be applied to promote prosocial behavior in some of the larger societal problems or conflicts.

Cernadas Curotto: In this study, we tested future thinking at the interpersonal level, so further research is required on the application of this intervention at the intergroup level. Nevertheless, future thinking has already been used in important international negotiations, such as the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1978. Therefore, this type of intervention could be useful in intergroup conflict resolution to unfreeze or disarm a negotiation.

If you had a prescription for people based on what you’ve learned in your research, what would it be?

Cernadas Curotto: We are very fortunate to be able to mentally travel in time, and it is an ability worth using! Our research has shown that future thinking is related to adaptative behaviors such as helping others. We also found preliminary evidence that this link could be extended at the personality trait level: Participants who reported more frequent (positive) mental travel in time (past or future), also reported more prosocial behaviors. So, it might be interesting to intentionally take a few minutes each week or day, to imagine our future—as it might strengthen constructive relationships.

Why are you interested in promoting prosocial behavior—what drew you to this area of research?

Klimecki-Lenz: As a human species we advance through cooperation and altruism. These are key elements that hold our society together, help us thrive, and help us be connected and creative. There are times when prosocial behavior becomes difficult, for instance in conflicts or disputes. A key question for me is to map out a range of interventions that help to promote prosocial behavior in different contexts.

What do you hope to study next?

Klimecki-Lenz: We recently moved more into the field of interpersonal and inter-group conflicts to test whether and how longer interventions can help to promote the resolution of conflicts.

Katherine Harmon Courage is the deputy editor at Nautilus . Follow her on Twitter @KHCourage.

Lead image: GoodStudio / Shutterstock

1. Cernadas Curotto, P., Sander, D., d’Argembeau, A., & Klimecki, O. Back to the future: A way to increase prosocial behavior. PLoS One 17 , e0272340 (2022).

2. Weisz, E., Ong, D.C., Carlson, R.W., & Zaki, J. Building empathy through motivation-based interventions. Emotion 21 , 990-999 (2021).

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Mental Time Travel

How does the brain zip back and forth in time.

Posted December 23, 2010

Remembering the past and envisioning the future: These are the closest we can get to "time travel," and a new study has investigated how this process works in the human brain.

Results of the study -- performed by Lars Nyberg of Sweden's Umea University, Reza Habib of Southern Illinois University, and Alice S. N. Kim, Brian Levine, and Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto -- appear in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Chronesthesia is the technical term for the brain's ability to maintain simultaneous awareness of past, present and future and to "travel" back and forth between them.

Interviewed by a reporter from PhysOrg.com , Tulving said:

"Mental time travel consists of two independent sets of processes: (1) those that determine the contents of any act of such ‘travel': what happens, who are the 'actors,' where does the action occur; it is similar to the contents of watching a movie - everything that you see on the screen; and (2) those that determine the subjective moment of time in which the action takes place -- past, present, or future.

"In cognitive neuroscience , we know quite a bit (relatively speaking) about perceived, remembered, known, and imagined space," he said. "We know essentially nothing about perceived, remembered, known, and imagined time. When you remember something that you did last night, you are consciously aware not only that the event happened and that you were ‘there,' as an observer or participant ('episodic memory '), but also that it happened yesterday, that is, at a time that is no more. The question we are asking is, how do you know that it happened at a time other than 'now'?"

The study is titled " Consciousness of subjective time in the brain."

The researchers asked participants to repeatedly think about "taking a short walk in a familiar environment in either the imagined past, the real past, the present, or the imagined future." This helped them identify which areas of the brain are linked with thinking about the same event at different times. These are certain regions in the left lateral parietal cortex, left frontal cortex, cerebellum, and thalamus.

Tulving told PhysOrg.com:

"Until now, the processes that determine contents and the processes that determine time have not been separated in functional neuroimaging studies of chronesthesia; especially, there have been no studies in which brain regions involved in time alone, rather than time together with action, have been identified," Tulving said. "The concept of chronesthesia is essentially brand new. ... Therefore, I would say, the most important result of our study is the novel finding that there seem to exist brain regions that are more active in the (imagined) past and the (imagined) future than they are in the (imagined) present. That is, we found some evidence for chronesthesia."

S. Rufus is the author, under the byline Anneli Rufus, of books including Party of One and Stuck.

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The Complex Role of Mental Time Travel in Depressive and Anxiety Disorders: An Ensemble Perspective

Associated data.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

The ensemble hypothesis proposes that uniquely human cognitive abilities depend on more than just language. Besides overt language, inner speech, and causal interpretations, executive attention, mental time travel, and theory of mind abilities are essential parts that combine additively and even multiplicatively. In this review, we consider the implications of the ensemble hypothesis for the psychopathologies of anxiety and depression. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are two of the most common mental disorders worldwide. The mechanisms that differentiate them are difficult to identify, however. Mental time travel has been implicated in models of depressive and anxiety disorders, but here we argue that at least two other ensemble components, namely, interpreter biases and executive attention, must also be considered. Depressive and anxiety disorders have both been found to show impairments in all three of these components, but the precise relationships seem to distinguish the two kinds of disorders. In reviewing the literature, we develop models for depression and anxiety that take into account an ensemble of mental components that are unique for each disorder. We specify how the relations among mental time travel, interpreter biases, and executive attentional control differ in depression and anxiety. We conclude by considering the implications of these models for treating and conceptualizing anxiety and depression.

Introduction

Depressive and anxiety disorders are two major categories of psychopathology, yet they have proven difficult to differentiate in some respects. As will be documented below, both are characterized by dysfunctional executive attention and pessimistic attributional styles, with a high degree of comorbidity. Here we build on the premise of Roepke and Seligman (2016) that the core problem in depression is a difficulty in mental time travel, specifically, an inability to envision positive events in the future. We consider the role of mental time travel in differentiating the two disorders and conclude that this component of human cognition is by itself insufficient. Mental time travel, we suggest, is moderated by problems with executive attention and an interpretive component responsible for causal attributions and inner speech.

In an important paper, Roepke and Seligman (2016) argued that prospection, or the mental representation of future events, plays a major role in depression. Human episodic memory enables mental time travel, that is to say, the ability both to recall past autobiographical events and to imagine possible future events ( Tulving, 2002 ). Roepke and Seligman suggested that the negative beliefs about the future and feelings of hopelessness that characterize depressive disorders ( Beck, 1974 ) can be directly linked to faulty prospection, an inability to envision possible futures and poor evaluation of possible futures. In their view, “.faulty prospection is the core causal process of much depression” (p. 24). A similar proposal was advanced by Miloyan et al. (2014) to account for depression; they also extended the analysis by suggesting that a different form of faulty prospection, centered on worry rather than pessimism and hopelessness, lay at the core of anxiety disorders.

We agree that problems with mental time travel are central to psychopathology, but we question whether this component can be isolated from other cognitive components to ascertain its relative contribution. Instead, we argue that other fundamental components of human cognition are concurrently at work in both depressive and anxiety disorders. In our view, it is important to consider how other components impair or even enhance the functioning of mental time travel. To develop this perspective, we draw on the ensemble hypothesis, which holds that human cognition depends on five core systems or components that interact in non-additive ways ( Kellogg, 2013 ; Kellogg and Evans, 2019 ). Mental time travel is necessary but not sufficient for explaining either the remarkable competencies of human cognition or its breakdowns in disorders such as anxiety and depression. An advanced executive form of working memory, a theory of mind augmenting social cognition, language, the ability to interpret information using inner speech, and causal inference are necessary, as well as an episodic memory capable of mental time travel. Kellogg (2013) introduced the ensemble hypothesis in the context of understanding the exceptional cognitive abilities in the evolution of our species, Homo sapiens . The book provides the reasons for considering the five components and their interactions in normally developing and functioning human beings. Kellogg and Evans (2019) offered further evidence in support of the hypothesis from behavioral studies, lesion studies, and studies involving neuro-atypical populations.

The key claim of the ensemble hypothesis is that two or more mental capacities can interact in a multiplicative fashion to yield competencies in a well-functioning human being that exceed their simple additive effects. For example, delay of gratification is a phenomenon that entails an ability both to prospectively consider the future and to exercise cognitive control using executive attention. In typically developing children, growth in the capacity of executive attention for self-regulation boosts the ability to delay rewards in anticipation of a larger future reward ( Mischel et al., 1989 ). Similarly, planning in problem solving requires future thinking and a normally functioning system of executive attention. Frontal lobe injuries that damage networks of executive attention often impair planning ( Kellogg and Evans, 2019 ). In normally functioning adults, retrospective memory for a list of words presented in a laboratory task requires an intact hippocampus and medial temporal lobe, but it is also boosted by maintenance and elaborative rehearsal strategies that depend on executive attention. Failing to deploy attentional resources to an encoding strategy impairs the recall of a list of words presented in a laboratory task in individuals with depression ( Hertel and Rude, 1991 ). As will be considered in detail later, the normal functioning of mental time travel can be altered by depression because of its effects, in part, on executive attention.

The purpose of the present paper is to consider the implications of the ensemble hypothesis for two broad categories of psychopathology: depression and anxiety. We suggest that much of the phenomenology and symptoms that underlie depressive and anxiety disorders can best be understood as an interaction of components of the hypothesized ensemble. We wish to extend the insights provided by Miloyan et al. (2014) and Roepke and Seligman (2016) by demonstrating how the interpreter and executive attention influence mental time travel. As will be seen, language is considered in the form of inner speech, but the broader concept of language as interpersonal communication falls outside the scope of the current paper. Similarly, as will be addressed in the limitation section of our paper, an extensive literature on theory of mind and social cognition in depression ultimately needs to be accounted for. Even so, our focus on the interpreter, executive attention, and mental time travel documents the importance of the interactions posited by the ensemble hypothesis.

To illustrate, consider the case of depression (see Figure 1 ), as exemplified by major depressive disorder (MDD). As will be discussed in detail later, the interpreter shown in Figure 1 refers to the inner voice and causal inference capacity of the left hemisphere of the human brain that enables attributions about the self and other people ( Gazzaniga, 2000 ; Kellogg, 2013 ). In depression, the interpreter is biased to assign blame to the self for negative experiences. This pessimistic and personally negative explanatory style ( Petersen and Seligman, 1984 ) causes the depressed individual to focus attention on negative past events and have difficulty envisioning anything positive about the future. Further, there is evidence that depression is associated with a concurrent deficit in executive attention ( Ólafsson et al., 2011 ), causing impaired cognitive control over mental time travel resulting in persistent negative rumination. Thus, the influence of both a bias in interpretation and a deficit in executive attention, we propose, could underlie faulty prospection in depressed individuals. The interactive model of Figure 1 differs from the position of Roepke and Seligman (2016) with respect to effective approaches to treatment for depression. They advocate for treatments targeting mental time travel, specifically, the core problem with prospection. Alternately, we contend that efforts to improve executive attention and to correct the pessimistic explanatory style of the interpreter ought not be neglected, because they can alter the functioning of mental time travel.

Model of major depressive disorder.

The plan of the paper is, first, to introduce several components of the ensemble hypothesis that are central to our analysis of depressive and anxiety disorders. Second, we consider evidence on the role of mental time travel in depressive and anxiety disorders. Third, we discuss literature regarding the pessimistic explanatory style in depression and suggest that anxious individuals are characterized by a related but distinct dysfunctional style of explaining events as threatening to the self. The emphasis on loss in depression and threats in anxiety can influence the functioning of mental time travel, we propose. Fourth, we document that both kinds of disorders are associated with impairments in executive attention that may compound problems with mental time travel. Fifth, we discuss how the symptoms of depression versus anxiety can best be understood by considering mental time travel, the interpreter, and executive attention as an integrated ensemble. We conclude by considering the implications of the ensemble perspective regarding effective therapies for depressive and anxiety disorders.

Mental Time Travel, the Interpreter, and Executive Attention

Mental time travel is the unusual form of human episodic memory that allows the mind to recollect the specific time and place of a past event in one’s personal history ( Tulving, 2002 ; Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007 ). It is conceived as mental time travel because the same neural systems are involved in imagining future events as well as recollecting past events. The brain systems involved in mental time travel include the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe structures as well as the default mode network activated in resting state conditions when no external task is presented ( Buckner et al., 2008 ). The ability to construct spatially coherent scenes in which an event takes place is essential in both recollecting the past and imagining the future. It has been suggested that scene construction is a core function of the hippocampus ( Clark and Maguire, 2016 ).

A uniquely human mental ability appears to be the interpretive capacity of the left hemisphere ( Gazzaniga, 2000 ). Over the course of human evolution, our oral language capacity became internalized as inner speech, mediated by language networks in the left hemisphere. Vygotsky (1962) emphasized that speech begins in early childhood as a means for communication, but as speech is internalized, it also becomes a means for planning and problem solving. Self-directed inner speech, then, has long been recognized as an important vehicle for thinking and appraising situations and events. The interpreter constructs a personal narrative that explains why we feel and behave as we do. Inner speech is combined with a specialization of the left hemisphere for a specific kind of thinking. The left hemisphere is not only specialized for the use of language, including self-directed language of inner speech, but it is also specialized for forming hypotheses ( Wolford et al., 2000 ) and making inferences about causal relationships ( Roser et al., 2005 ). Similarly, the ability to reason deductively is known to be impaired in patients with left frontal lesions but not right frontal lesions ( Reverberi et al., 2010 ).

In clinical psychology, the interpreter is important in understanding the role of inner speech and causal inference in how people respond to stressful life events. How an individual cognitively appraises stressors can either attenuate or exacerbate the strain that they cause. This role for causal attributions has long been recognized in understanding depressive and anxiety disorders. For example, Petersen and Seligman (1984) highlighted that depression is characterized by a personalized and pessimistic explanatory style. The individual attributes personal, pervasive, and permanent causes to negative personal experiences, committing what social psychologists call the fundamental attribution error. The role played by the interpreter in explaining why things happen and what significance events have for the self is central to both depression and anxiety, as will be detailed later in the paper.

The executive attention component of working memory enables the coordination and regulation of representations held in verbal, visual, and spatial stores of short-term memory. Working memory, planning, cognitive control, self-regulation, and response inhibition have all been referred to as executive functions that have traditionally been viewed as dependent on the frontal lobe ( Alvarez and Emory, 2006 ; Posner and Rothbart, 2007 ; Diamond, 2013 ; Ajilchi and Nejati, 2017 ). A more complex understanding has emerged in the literature with two distinct brain networks involved in executive attention; these include but are not limited to regions in the frontal lobe ( Posner and Peterson, 1990 ; Petersen and Posner, 2012 ).

By studying a battery of executive functioning tasks, Miyake et al. (2000) identified three correlated but distinctive processes underlying performance. Updating the contents of working memory, shifting goals as required in multitasking, and inhibiting irrelevant information are considered three essential and irreducible functions of executive attention. A widely used test of individual differences in working memory capacity, called the Operation Span (OSPAN) test, indicates that the ability to inhibit irrelevant information is especially important and shows a strong correlation with general fluid intelligence or the ability to solve novel problems ( Engle et al., 1999 ).

Mental time travel, the interpreter, and executive attention are three fundamental components of human cognition. Kellogg (2013) proposed that these components, together with theory of mind and language, comprise an ensemble that renders human cognition unique and qualitatively different from non-human cognition. Importantly, his hypothesis suggests that it is the interaction of these components that yields the unique properties of human cognition. If that is so, then it stands to reason that common forms of psychopathology should reveal such interactions, too. In persons experiencing anxiety or depression, a deficit in one component can cascade to degrade the functioning of another component, despite that the latter component is not necessarily dysfunctional.

Mental Time Travel Impairments

Roepke and Seligman (2016) reviewed a variety of evidence that faulty prospection lies at the heart of depression. First, persons experiencing depression can envision negative future scenarios more readily, compared to non-depressed persons ( MacLeod and Byrne, 1996 ). This characteristic is also shared with those experiencing anxiety, indicating it is not a unique dysfunction of mental time travel associated with depression. Miloyan et al. (2014) suggested that anxious as well as depressed individuals anticipate negative future events but that each disorder shows a unique profile of faulty prospection. Individuals with anxiety anticipate more negative experiences, but not fewer positive experiences, relative to control participants without a history of psychiatric diagnosis, according to some studies ( MacLeod and Byrne, 1996 ; MacLeod et al., 1997b ). Depression, on the other hand, is associated with a failure to anticipate positive future events ( Miranda and Mennin, 2006 ; Pomerantz and Rose, 2014 ). When depressed psychiatric outpatients were asked to describe a distressing personal problem and to imagine and rate the likelihood of both the worst and best possible outcomes, they rated the worst outcome as being more likely and the best outcome as being less likely, relative to generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and control groups ( Beck et al., 2006 ).

Thus, it is possible that a faulty form of prospection found in depression results in a diminished ability to envision positive future events ( MacLeod and Salaminiou, 2001 ). However, both this finding and the finding that individuals with depression envision more negative future events than do controls can also be linked to a pessimistic explanatory style. MacLeod et al. (1997a) found that both depressed and anxious patients not only judged future negative events to be more likely, relative to controls; they also provided more supportive as opposed to contradictory reasons for their occurrence. As MacLeod et al. (p. 22) concluded, “…mood-disturbed subjects were pessimistic about what would happen to them in the future, and this was supported by their causal thinking about those events.” Thus, the pessimistic explanatory style of the interpreter rather than a malfunction in mental time travel per se could explain the findings. They could also be linked to the deficits in executive attention that are associated with depression ( Ólafsson et al., 2011 ). As will be argued in later sections of the paper, problems with mental time travel may arise because of the moderating influences of the interpreter and executive attention.

An important exception regarding memory impairment in depression is the tendency to focus and elaborate upon sad events ( Williams et al., 1997 ). A case can be made for mood congruent memory in depression ( Mineka and Nugent, 1995 ). For example, in a study by Derry and Kuiper (1981) , a list of depression-related adjectives (e.g., bleak, dismal, helpless) and non-depression-related adjectives (e.g., amiable, curious, loyal) were presented in an incidental learning task. The nature of the orienting task was manipulated, with one way being whether the adjective applied to the self. On a subsequent recall test, this self-reference orienting task resulted in a greater proportion of depressed-content words recalled (41%) than non-depressed content (16%) for depressed patients. Strikingly, this pattern was completely reversed for normal controls, who recalled more non-depressed content (43%) compared with depressed content (8%). Even a group of psychiatric controls showed a reversal with more non-depressed content (36%) relative to depressed content (18%). None of these effects were observed for structural (small letters?) and semantic (means the same?) orienting tasks, indicating that they are contingent on judging the word as relevant to the self.

Similarly, in another study, after being shown a list of words including pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral words, individuals with depression recalled more unpleasant words compared with pleasant words ( McDowall, 1984 ). A non-depressed control group as well as another control group made up of psychiatric patients with a diagnosis other than depression did not show this bias toward improved memory for unpleasant words. The depressed patients’ free recall of unpleasant words was at the same level as that for the two control groups, whereas they showed a memory impairment for pleasant words. This indicates that the mood congruent benefit of remembering unpleasant words can offset the usual memory impairment found in depression.

Clark and Teasdale (1982) found that autobiographical experiences also reveal mood congruency even within the same group of individuals with depression. The investigators compared the recall of personal memories at two different times of day to capitalize on diurnal variations in mood among psychiatric patients experiencing depression. The percentage of unhappy memories (52.3%) was reliably greater when the individual reported being more depressed compared with less depressed (36.7%). Happy memories (37.7 versus 51.1%) showed exactly the reverse pattern.

The above studies show that depression can bias retrospection in the direction of remembering sad events more readily than happy events. Would such findings also hold for prospection? MacLeod et al. (1997b) measured the recall of past experiences and the anticipation of future experiences in anxious, depressed, and control individuals. The study prompted the participants to remember or anticipate either positive experiences or negative experiences. This prompt variable allowed the comparison of the number of positive events versus negative events produced under conditions of both retrospection and prospection. Their findings showed no difference between the retrospection and prospection conditions for either disorder. Of importance, individuals with depression produced fewer events compared with controls—both positive and negative—both in recalling their past and in anticipating their future.

An analogous outcome has been found in laboratory studies of the retrospective recall of word lists versus prospective memory for future actions. Hertel and Rude (1991) found poorer free recall of a list of words presented earlier for currently depressed patients compared with recovered patients and control individuals with no history of depression in a retrospective task. Rude et al. (1999) similarly reported that depressed individuals perform poorly on a prospective memory task requiring the ability to self-initiate an action in the future. Their difficulties with “remembering to remember” to act in the future were parallel to impairments found in retrospective tasks, according to the authors. Of course, these tasks are different from the autobiographical reports examined by MacLeod et al., but the conclusions reached are consistent. MacLeod et al. (1997a) also found that anxious individuals did not differ from controls either in remembering or in anticipating positive events. However, they generated more negative events compared with controls regardless of whether they were engaged in retrospection or prospection. Their findings thus confirm that anxiety is primarily a disorder of worrying about negative outcomes ( Barlow, 1988 ). Whereas MacLeod et al.’s control participants both recalled and anticipated about 44% more positive life events than negative ones, the anxious participants only recalled 15% more positive events. Compared to participants with depression, the participants with anxiety recalled and anticipated about 67% more negative events.

Finally, MacLeod et al. expected that individuals with depression would show a mood congruent effect by remembering or anticipating more negative events compared with positive events. In contrast to prior studies reviewed earlier, this outcome did not occur. Rather, negative events were remembered by patients with depression at about the same rate as found in the controls. This rate was equivalent to the number of positive events remembered by those with depression, who were 75% less likely to remember positive events than were patients with anxiety and controls. This is reminiscent of the findings with the free recall of word lists reported by McDowall (1984) . Unpleasant words were remembered as well by patients with depression as by controls, but recall for pleasant words showed a marked impairment.

The above findings on memory could depend on the severity of the depressive disorder. It is important to note in that regard that MacLeod et al. (1997b) examined patients who met the diagnostic criteria for panic disorder and MDD. Similarly, the studies by Derry and Kuiper (1981) , Clark and Teasdale (1982) , McDowall (1984) , Hertel and Rude (1991) , and Rude et al. (1999) examined psychiatric inpatients or patients with depression in the community with screening done to insure they met the diagnostic criterion for depression. By contrast, in a non-clinical student population, neither trait anxiety nor trait depression was associated with difficulties in a measure of prospective memory ( Arnold et al., 2014 ). Thus, the severity of the disorder probably plays a role in the effects of depression and anxiety on mental time travel.

In contrast to the picture for clinical depression, the findings on retrospective memory for anxiety disorders are mixed. MacLeod and McLaughlin (1995) found that individuals currently receiving treatment for GAD performed worse than those in a control group on an explicit recognition test for words presented in a laboratory setting. By contrast, on explicit memory tests of cued recall ( Mathews et al., 1989 ) and free recall ( Becker et al., 1999 ), anxious individuals performed at the same level as control participants. For threatening words included among the lists presented in the laboratory, GAD patients showed no advantage in recall or recognition, but they did show superior performance on various implicit memory tests compared with controls ( Mathews et al., 1989 ; MacLeod and McLaughlin, 1995 ). A similar heightened explicit memory for threatening words was found by Becker et al. (1999) for individuals diagnosed with panic disorder but not with social phobia or GAD. In a review of the literature on memory and anxiety disorders, Mineka and Nugent (1995) concluded that the evidence for an explicit memory bias for threatening events is weak, difficult to replicate, and unconvincing, at least with respect to persons experiencing GAD.

We conclude from this sample of findings in the literature that while depression impairs mental time travel ability, it does not seem to be a selective difficulty with prospection. Judging from the findings of MacLeod et al. (1997a) , at least for positive events, anxious individuals do not appear to show any impairment in mental time travel, either in its prospective or in its retrospective form. In fact, they appear to recollect past negative events and envision future negative events more often than is found in both non-anxious controls and depressed patients. However, other studies indicate that such memory bias for threatening events is tenuous at best in anxiety. Patients with depression, on the other hand, forget positive events more readily than is found in non-depressed controls. A central question is what accounts for these differences in the functioning of the mental time travel component. We propose that considering the role played by the interpreter and executive attention helps to understand the pattern of results found for mental time travel.

Interpreter Biases

As noted earlier, the interpreter in individuals with depression employs a pessimistic explanatory style ( Petersen and Seligman, 1984 ). An inability to envision a positive future and a facility with envisioning a negative future could be understood as a dysfunction of the explanatory style found in individuals with depression rather than a fault with mental time travel per se ( MacLeod et al., 1997a ). A negative style of explaining why things happen as they do is a prime reason for feelings of hopelessness in depressed people ( Alloy et al., 1988 ). Individuals with depression tend to attribute the reasons for events in life to internalized causes about the self that are stable over time and that are global or pervasive in multiple situations. Another compounding factor is a negative attributional style that attributes negative events to uncontrollable causes ( Sanjuán and Magallares, 2009 ). As a consequence, persons with depression might be able to recollect or imagine an event that most people would regard as positive (e.g., getting a job promotion) but then interpret it as negative. Individuals with depression might appraise the promotion as full of pitfalls—more responsibility, longer working hours, and greater stress. Remembering or anticipating a job promotion may not be the problem but, rather, its pessimistic interpretation.

The interpreter, therefore, has a prominent, if not central, role in depression. Indeed, Beck (1974) designed cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to confront and modify a depressed person’s inner speech of hopelessness and self-deprecation. By altering the person’s cognitive appraisals of situations and causal explanations of events, mood improves as a result. Beck’s concept of the cognitive triad included a negative view of the self, negative interpretations of ongoing experiences, and a negative view of the future. Although the latter could be caused by faulty prospection, the first two stem from the distorted explanations of the interpreter.

Comparisons of the interpretative style of depressed versus anxious individuals have yielded conflicting results, however. For example, Heimberg et al. (1989) , by contrast, found that the attributional style found in the learned helplessness of individuals with depression was also characteristic of multiple anxiety disorders, such as social phobia, agoraphobia, and panic disorder. In their study, the two disorders differed only in that depression produced global and unstable attributions regarding the causes of positive events, whereas anxiety was associated with the same kind of attributions for negative events. Still other findings indicate that attributing internal, stable, and global causes to negative events is in fact found in currently depressed individuals, but especially in those with comorbid anxiety ( Fresco et al., 2006 ). Similarly, Luten et al. (1997) concluded that a pessimistic attributional style is not specific to depression but, rather, is correlated with high levels of negative affect as is also found in in persons with anxiety disorders. Ahrens and Haaga (1993) even reported that a negative event attributional style was only found with anxiety disorders rather than with depression.

Thus, it seems that pessimistic forms of causal inference about life’s events are a non-specific risk factor for anxiety and depression. This commonality with respect to the dysfunction of the interpreter is a likely reason why depressive and anxiety disorders share a high degree of comorbidity ( Gotlib, 1984 ; Kessler et al., 2007 ; Grisanzio et al., 2018 ).

Despite their similarities and high rates of comorbidity, there may be some unique aspects to the interpreter’s dysfunction in anxiety disorders, however. Riskind and Williams (2005) identified a looming cognitive style in which individuals overestimate the progression of a potential threat in terms of both spatial and temporal dimensions. Individuals with a high score on their looming cognitive scale misinterpret potential threats as catastrophic threats. A study by Reardon and Williams (2007) showed that this looming cognitive style is uniquely associated with anxiety disorders. A pessimistic cognitive style contributed to both anxiety disorders and depressive disorders, but individuals predisposed to anxiety disorders also were prone to a looming cognitive style that magnifies potential threats. Anxiety disorders also feature highly persistent negative self-talk. The excessive worry that characterizes anxiety is largely verbal in nature ( Borkovec et al., 1998 ). Instead of imagining a threat in a visual–spatial context, anxious individuals talk to themselves about it. Finally, it has long been recognized that the causal inferences made in depression are associated with personal failures and self-deprecation ( Beck, 1974 ). This contrasts with worries about uncertainties and potential dangers in the case of anxiety disorders ( Beck et al., 1987 ; Clark et al., 1990 ).

As shown in Figure 2 , the anxious interpreter views events as threatening to the self rather than as a negative reflection of the self as in depression ( Figure 1 ). Kendall and Ingram (1989) differentiated the two disorders precisely in terms of their characteristic attributions. The interpretations of the depressive person often are “self-referent, definitive, past-oriented cognitions of sadness, failure, degradation, and loss,” in contrast to the “future oriented ‘questioning’ cognitions” found in anxiety disorders ( Kendall and Ingram, 1989 ; p. 36).

Model of generalized anxiety disorder.

In our view, the interpreter biases play a role in the problems observed in mental time travel with depressed and anxious individuals ( Eysenck et al., 2006 ). For depression ( Figure 1 ), the pessimism of the interpreter causes individuals with depression to remember and ruminate about negative life experiences that reinforce feelings of loss and self-blame. Perhaps the difficulty with imagining a positive future is a direct consequence of depressed individuals focusing on negative past events. Roepke and Seligman (2016 , p. 27), in fact, suggest the possibility that persons experiencing depression “struggle to recall a good past,” with few positive memories ( Williams and Scott, 1988 ).

For GAD ( Figure 2 ), the interpreter is biased to detect threats to the self. This might cause one to recall, see, and foresee dangers rather than losses. Instead of mental time travel being impaired relative to control individuals who are neither depressed nor anxious, there is, if anything, an excessive prospection and retrospection of negative events. This outcome can be seen in the study by MacLeod et al. (1997b) , who reported that anxious individuals both retrospectively and prospectively generated more negative events than did controls and even individuals with depression. Similarly, when asked to recall recent life events, 77% of anxious participants remembered danger events compared to 44% of depressed participants ( Finlay-Jones and Brown, 1981 ). Loss events, on the other hand, were more frequently remembered by participants with depression (65%) compared with anxiety (15%). Comparable findings for autobiographical recall have been reported by Witheridge et al. (2010) .

Thus, in our view, the interpreter plays a key role in the functioning of the mental time travel component. The content of the events that are remembered in depression is more likely to deal with loss rather than danger. This, we suggest, occurs because of the bias of the interpreter on mental time travel. In anxiety disorders, retrospection is not impaired; if anything, there is excessive rather than impaired prospection and retrospection about threatening events. In addition to mental time travel being moderated by the interpreter, we further consider in the next section the possible influence of executive attention.

Executive Attention Deficits in Depression and Anxiety

A number of studies have shown that anxiety and depression are associated with impaired performance on a variety of neuropsychological tests that measure for executive control functions ( Reinholdt-Dunne et al., 2013 ; Devito et al., 2018 ). This supports the notion that both disorders are associated with impairments in executive attentional control. In this article, we refer to executive attention as executive attentional control and attentional control, interchangeably. In accordance with Stefanopoulou et al. (2014 , p. 330), attentional control can be defined as “the ability to sustain focus on tasks in the face of competing activities or to shift attention from one task to another.” However, depression and anxiety do not show the same pattern of executive attention deficits.

The Attentional Control Scale (ACS) is a self-reported attention control measure that is comprised of two components: focusing and shifting ( Reinholdt-Dunne et al., 2013 ). Ólafsson et al. (2011 , p.77) define attentional focusing as “the capacity to intentionally hold the attentional focus on desired channels and thereby resist unintentional shifting to irrelevant or distracting channels” and define attentional shifting as “the capacity to intentionally shift the attentional focus to desired channels, thereby avoiding unintentional focusing on particular channels.” Because it has been noted that those with anxiety show attentional impairment in relation to shifting and focusing ( Devito et al., 2018 ), the ACS has been used to compare the relationship between attentional focusing, attentional shifting, and levels of anxiety and depression in adults. Ólafsson et al. (2011) found that when controlled for depression, the focusing ACS subscale significantly predicted anxiety ratings, whereas when anxiety ratings were controlled for, the shifting subscale significantly predicted depression ratings. Reinholdt-Dunne et al. (2013) supported these findings when they found ACS focusing to be associated with lower anxiety and ACS shifting to be associated with fewer depression symptoms. These findings support the claim that anxiety is more associated with attentional focusing and depression is more associated with attentional shifting.

Shi et al. (2019) performed a meta-analysis to investigate the size and nature of attentional control deficits in participants with anxiety versus non-anxious participants. They found that anxiety-producing deficits were supported in processing efficiency, rather than effectiveness, on a variety of behavioral tasks. However, they also found that when looking at task switching studies alone, both efficiency and effectiveness produced anxiety-related deficits in attentional control. Their results also showed that studies requiring participants to operate under high cognitive load conditions showed greater anxiety-related attentional control deficits compared to studies where participants were under normal cognitive load conditions ( Shi et al., 2019 ).

Although attentional control deficits have been related to anxiety disorders, these deficits are prominently seen in individuals diagnosed with GAD, characterized by uncontrollable worry. This uncontrollable worry has been connected to deficits of the central executive function of working memory, which includes attentional control as a key component of working memory ( Stefanopoulou et al., 2014 ). Uncontrollable worrying can be attention-demanding and, consequently, consumes voluntary attentional resources required ( Eysenck et al., 2007 ). This links uncontrollable worry to impairments in attentional control.

Stefanopoulou et al. (2014) used the key-pressing task to assess the extent to which attentional resources were depleted by worry in individuals with GAD. Stefanopoulou et al. (2014) found that GAD individuals were less random on the key-pressing task while worrying compared to when thinking of a positive topic, indicating that fewer residual attentional control resources were available during the worrying process. However, the performance of the healthy participants did not differ between conditions. GAD participants also reported having more negative thoughts and anxiety during this task compared to healthy participants. This same study also used the N-back task, which “varies in difficulty and is sensitive to subtle difference in ability to handle increasing demands on attentional control” ( Stefanopoulou et al., 2014 , p. 330). During this task, GAD participants exhibited longer reaction times compared to healthy participants for the higher load conditions. These results together indicate a greater difficulty in sustaining focus in conditions requiring a higher degree of attentional control, suggesting that poor attentional control may partially explain the excessive worry seen in individuals with GAD.

Further, there appears to be a bidirectional relationship between attentional control and anxiety ( Devito et al., 2018 ). Impairments in attentional control may increase one’s risk for developing anxiety, and anxiety symptoms may prevent executive components of attention from being recruited. We indicate this bidirectional relationship between the interpreter and executive attention in Figure 2 . The pessimistic explanatory style and negative self-talk of the interpreter consume limited attentional resources. The resulting deficit in executive attention weakens the ability to inhibit the dysfunctional thinking of the interpreter in anxiety disorders.

Whether a similar bidirectional relationship occurs in depression is unclear. An argument against this takes into account the speech and inner speech of depressed versus anxious individuals based on the symptoms outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition ( DSM-V ). The hallmark of GAD is excessive worry in the form of inner speech. By contrast, in MDD, fatigue and tiredness occur on nearly a daily basis, and this can be accompanied by slowed speech, long pauses before responding, and a decrease in the amount and variety of speech content ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 , p. 132). These suggest that inner speech in MDD is more likely to be inhibited or overly regulated rather than exaggerated, as is apparent in GAD. Moreover, in a review of the literature on inner speech, Alderson-Day and Fernyhough (2015) noted that the evidence for inner speech playing a central role in anxiety disorders is stronger and more specific than it is with depression. The verbalized worry of anxiety is, in their words (p. 948), “…repetitive thinking that is.negative, uncontrollable, and aimed at some ill-defined problem solving, such as a problem with a clear solution.” We propose that the bidirectional links between executive attention and the interpreter produce worry in GAD that is indeed out of control (see Figure 2 ). A positive feedback loop ensues in which worry depletes attention, which in turn worsens worry. In depression, the negative impact of depleting attention does not appear to feed back on the interpreter. Instead, we suggest, it feeds forward to impact mental time travel. Specifically, the deficit in executive attention found in depression results in a loss of control in mental time travel (see Figure 1 ). The arrows shown in Figures 1 , ​ ,2 2 are intended to reflect the major pathways of influence from one component to another. From the perspective of the ensemble hypothesis, all possible links among components are potentially relevant, including bidirectional relationships. In a normally developed and well-functioning adult human being, each of these components influences the others. Our aim in these figures is to take a minimalist approach by highlighting only strong interactions that differ from normal under a diagnosis of psychopathology. The purpose is to differentiate as clearly as possible how MDD and GAD differ from each other. For example, we intentionally omit an influence of executive attention on mental time travel in GAD. Although it is known that the availability of executive attention affects the functioning of mental time travel even in healthy individuals, we only indicate interactions that are unique to GAD or MDD.

Memory Impairment From an Ensemble Perspective

As shown in Figure 1 , we suggest that both retrospection and prospection will be impaired as a result of a deficit in executive attention ( Hertel and Rude, 1991 ; Rude et al., 1999 ). Evidence for a causal role played by attention comes from an intervention designed by Hertel and Rude (1991) to remediate the attentional deficits. Hertel and Rude studied three groups of individuals who were currently depressed, recovered from depression, or without a history of depression in an incidental learning and memory task. The participants’ ability to recall a list of target words that they had viewed in the first phase of the experiment was markedly impaired in the individuals with depression compared with recovered and healthy controls. But this outcome only occurred when their attention to the words during learning was unconstrained by the demands of the task. For half of the participants, the investigators required the participants to repeat the target words aloud on each trial, as a means of focusing their attention. Strikingly, this manipulation eliminated the memory impairment of the depressed patients entirely. This result suggests that retrospection per se is not necessarily deficient in depression, but a memory deficit can be observed as a result of the influence of executive attention not being appropriately allocated to the task at hand.

A comparable finding was reported by McDowall (1984) . On a free recall test, inpatients with depression performed markedly worse than did a control group consisting of non-depressed psychiatric inpatients in remembering pleasant words. However, when given an orienting task of rating each word for pleasantness as was shown during the study phase, patients with depression showed no difference in recall between pleasant and unpleasant words and performed no worse than did the psychiatric control group doing the same task. Their mean recall of 5.6 words out of 12 was only slightly less than was found for a non-psychiatric control group (6.8 words), again with no difference between pleasant versus unpleasant words. As with the word repetition technique used by Hertel and Rude (1991) , the orienting task directed attention to the words in a way that eliminated most, if not all, of the memory impairment for individuals with depression.

Ruminating on negative life experiences is part and parcel of the sense of loss, hopelessness, and self-deprecation frequently seen in persons experiencing depression. In our view, these phenomena are the direct result of the interpreter bias found in depression. It is the influence of the interpreter with mental time travel that contributes to the inability of individuals with depression to think about positive life experiences, whether they lie in the past, the present, or the future. Further, the persistence and intrusiveness of negative memories in depression could reflect an inability to inhibit them because of executive attention deficits (see Figure 1 ). Poor cognitive control may combine with the loss bias of the interpreter to produce the profile of memory problems found in depression.

As shown in Figure 2 , for GAD, the mental time travel system is biased to focus on the uncertainties and threats of life experiences. Instead of loss and self-blame, the content of memories predominately concerns threats to the self in anxiety disorders to the extent that they are biased at all. This can account for why negative events are, at times, better remembered or anticipated by anxious individuals (e.g., MacLeod et al., 1997b ). However, in contrast to the memory bias effects for losses observed in depression, similar effects for threatening events in anxiety disorders are harder to detect reliably ( Mineka and Nugent, 1995 ). They might be found in panic disorder but not GAD ( Becker et al., 1999 ). Or they can be observed with implicit memory tests but not explicit tests of recall or recognition ( Mathews et al., 1989 ; MacLeod and McLaughlin, 1995 ). They might also be observed when people are asked to recall autobiographical events of personal relevance ( Finlay-Jones and Brown, 1981 ; Witheridge et al., 2010 ) but not when they are asked to remember word lists that contain some threatening versus neutral words ( Levy and Mineka, 1998 ).

We suggest that the mixed picture for memory bias in anxiety disorders occurs because executive attention deficits do not generally disrupt mental time travel in persons experiencing GAD, which is not the case for MDD (see Figure 2 ). The deficit in executive attention causes a loss of control with the interpreter but not with mental time travel. Without both a loss of cognitive control and a threat bias from the interpreter, the mental time travel system functions relatively normally in GAD. That implicit tests of memory reveal bias effects for negative information implies that a threat bias from the interpreter is at work. But for the declarative memory system of episodic memory to show such effects, it requires both the threat bias and a loss of cognitive control over mental time travel. Perhaps only in severe cases of anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder, does the loss of cognitive control from deficits in executive attention spill over to affect mental time travel, much as it does in depression. This could account for the results of Becker et al. (1999) for panic disorder in contrast with other forms of anxiety disorder. It is worth noting that MacLeod et al. (1997b) studied anxious participants who all met the criteria for panic disorder. Thus, the characteristics of their sample might have explained why they observed a bias for negative events when so many other studies have been unable to do so, as they noted in their discussion section.

In summary, accounting for the consistent memory bias for losses or a lack of positive memories in MDD seems to depend on distorting inputs from both executive attention and the interpreter (see Figure 1 ). For persons experiencing GAD without panic disorder, the input from executive attention is weak or non-existent. Without this concomitant symptomatology, the bias of the interpreter for threatening events does not distort either retrospective or prospective memory, although it shows up on implicit, non-declarative forms of memory.

Limitations, Implications, and Future Directions

As noted previously, our explication of the complex role of mental time travel in explaining the phenomenology and research findings related to MDD and GAD has focused on interrelationships between three of the five components of the ensemble hypothesis. In focusing on these three constructs, we acknowledge the limited attention we have given to the importance of the two remaining ensemble components—overt use of language and social cognition—in accounting for differences and similarities in MDD and GAD. Reviewing the broader concept of language as interpersonal communication falls outside the scope of the current paper. Similarly, the extensive literature on theory of mind and social cognition in disorders such as MDD and GAD merits careful consideration that is not undertaken by our current analysis. Research indicates that theory of mind, a specialized aspect of social cognition ( Frith and Frith, 2007 ), plays a complex role in presentations of depression and anxiety where aspects of social cognition are prominent ( Bora and Berk, 2016 ; Washburn et al., 2016 ). Examples would include depression in the context of discordant relationships or bereavement, and social anxiety disorder. Exploring the interrelationships between social cognition and other components of the ensemble hypothesis is a fruitful direction for further theorizing and research.

Also, our paper is limited in scope, in that we focused on accounting for differences between disorders such as MDD and GAD, rather than examining similarities in their phenomenology and accounting for the high comorbidity of these conditions. We believe that further analysis of the interrelationships among the ensemble of mental components in MDD and GAD may help account for the comorbidity of these two disorders. For example, the high incidence of comorbidity might be accounted for by the reciprocal relations between the cognitive ensemble components and symptoms that constitute pathways that connect the disorders ( Borsboom and Cramer, 2013 ). It is worth noting the strong similarities of MDD and GAD as portrayed in Figures 1 , ​ ,2. 2 . Both disorders involve several components of the ensemble hypothesis, including executive attention and the interpreter, in addition to mental time travel. The specific characteristics of memory functioning seem to depend on these interrelated cognitive components of the ensemble perspective. Thus, future theorizing and research should explore the interrelated components of the ensemble hypothesis as they relate to comorbid presentations of MDD and GAD.

Regarding one final limitation of our paper, we acknowledge that the ensemble component of “mental time travel” as it pertains to episodic foresight involves multiple constructs, each with substantive theoretical and empirical literatures that lie beyond the scope of our paper. Examples would include the role of mental time travel in future decision making involving delayed rewards ( Boyer, 2008 ) and the literature on “affective forecasting” ( Wilson and Gilbert, 2005 ) as it relates to the ensemble components in persons experiencing depression or anxiety. Once again, future theorizing and research should explore the interrelationships of such constructs with the ensemble components as they pertain to the etiology and phenomenology of MDD and GAD.

In review, we believe that similarities and differences between MDD and GAD are best conceptualized by considering an ensemble of mental components. Although mental time travel plays a role in both disorders, this component is influenced by the interpreter that assigns causal attributions to events and a dysfunction in executive attention.

If depression is primarily a problem with faulty prospection, then it is reasonable to target future thinking as perhaps the most effective form of treatment. Roepke and Seligman (2016) reviewed four variations of CBT that emphasize positive expectancies, hopeful thinking, a focus on future-oriented solutions to problems, and goal setting and planning. Initial results with each of these approaches have been positive and are worthy of additional study in randomized trials. Further, Roepke and Seligman (2016) suggest several new future-oriented interventions that might be considered (e.g., using visual imagery to imagine a route to future success).

While new approaches certainly merit exploration, we note that the premise underlying these—namely, that faulty prospection is the core causal process in depression—is open to debate. We believe that the effects of the interpreter and executive attention, in conjunction with mental time travel, should be considered to better understand both MDD ( Figure 1 ) and GAD ( Figure 2 ). From this ensemble perspective, therapies should target all three components rather than focusing only on mental time travel.

For example, mindfulness-based therapies including short-term meditation explicitly address deficits in executive attention. A short-term program (5 days of training for 20 min per day) has been shown to improve attention and self-regulation in a sample of healthy young adults ( Tang et al., 2007 ). Such mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to minimize relapse and offer promise in the treatment of acute symptoms of depression and anxiety, although more research is needed to clearly establish their clinical efficacy ( Edenfield and Saeed, 2012 ). In a different approach, training attention using computer-based tasks has been found beneficial in treating generalized social anxiety disorder ( Schmidt et al., 2009 ). If anxiety disorders as well as depression primarily are influenced by the mental time travel component ( Miloyan et al., 2014 ), then it is difficult to explain why treatments targeting the executive attention deficit would be effective. Yet, it is known that executive functioning matters. Although neurocognitive abilities can improve with CBT treatment for anxiety and depression, individuals with poor attentional control show decreased benefit from such treatment compared to those with adequate executive skills ( Devito et al., 2018 ).

Many techniques in traditional CBT build on the premise of altering the pessimistic explanatory styles employed by depressive and anxious individuals. These techniques are based on the premise that the symptoms and dysfunctional behaviors of these disorders are mediated by cognitive factors. The therapeutic goal, then, is to restructure the dysfunctional thinking and beliefs underlying the disorder. Cognitive distortions must be identified and refuted in restructuring the functions of the interpreter. The evidence supporting CBT as an effective treatment of both anxiety and depression is solid ( Butler et al., 2006 ). As Roepke and Seligman (2016) pointed out, CBT interventions already include a number of techniques that improve future thinking. Even so, the aim of CBT is to alter thinking patterns in general, including past and present thinking as well as future thinking. It is not clear that new approaches that emphasize future-oriented thinking only would be, or even should be, superior to standard CBT.

In terms of future directions, transdiagnostic psychotherapies for depression and anxiety ( Clark, 2009 ) could potentially be understood within and informed by the aspects of the ensemble hypothesis. The ensemble models shown in Figures 1 , ​ ,2 2 suggest that a unified approach to CBT plus mindfulness/attention training might well be plausible for treating both depressive and anxiety disorders. Finally, in recent years, network approaches to psychopathology have emphasized the interplay of symptoms across a variety of traditionally defined, yet comorbid, disorders ( Borsboom and Cramer, 2013 ). The psychopathology network approach contends that such emotional disorders arise from interactions among symptoms, as well as their reciprocally reinforcing relationships ( Borsboom, 2017 ). It may be possible to conceptualize these networks of psychopathology within the context of the ensemble hypothesis of human cognition considered here.

Data Availability Statement

Author contributions.

RK developed the concept of the paper. RK and CC wrote the first draft. JG contributed with advice and revisions to subsequent drafts. All authors reviewed the final manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. The funds required for open access fees required to publish this article were provided through Faculty Development accounts available to the first and third authors from the Department of Psychology at Saint Louis University.

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• Introduction
• Wellbeing and Its Importance in Schools
• What frameworks exist to promote school wellbeing?
• What is the best approach for my school/district?
• Valuable Tools and Consideration
• Your Call to Action
• Student Wellbeing Interventions
• Positive Emotion
• Three Good Things
• Counting Blessings
• Envisioning Your Best Possible Self
• Understanding Humor
• Three Funny Things
• Outdoor Learning
• Bringing the Outside In
• Bibliotherapy
• Recognizing and Utilizing Personal Strengths
• ARCS Model of Curiosity
• Carousel Brainstorming
• Genius Hour
• Perspective Taking and Role-Play
• Arts Integration
• Drawing and Coloring Therapy
• Culturally-Enriching and Arts-Based Field Trips
• Culturally Responsive Practices
• Social Belonging Intervention
• Emotional Self-Regulation: RULER method
• Modeling Emotional Self-Regulation Skills
• Teacher Praise
• Relationships
• Modeling Love, Kindness and Forgiveness
• Active Constructive Responding
• Dialogue Journals
• Secret Strengths Spotting
• Peer Praise Notes
• Acts of Kindness
• Volunteering
• Fast Friends
• Buddy Bench
• Educating Students about Benefit Appraisals
• Gratitude Letters
• Savoring Strategies
• Taking in the Good (HEAL)

Mental Time Travel

• Brief Mindfulness Activities
• Mindful Bell
• Mindful Breathing
• Body Scan Relaxation
• Mindful Walking/Movement
• Five Senses Mindfulness
• Mindful Photography
• Mindful Self-Compassion
• Accomplishment
• Future Thinking & When/Where Plans
• G-POWER Goal Setting
• Embedded Self-Regulation Strategies
• Growth Mindset
• Grit and Deliberate Practice
• Developing Students' Resilience and Coping Skills
• Health and Vitality
• Healthy Sleep Habits
• Classroom Physical Activity
• Creative Playground Equipment
• Healthy Body Image Intervention
• Student-Led Health Program
• Interventions for School Employee Wellbeing
• School-Led Interventions for Teachers and Staff
• School Leadership Teams
• Professional Learning Communities
• Peer Mentoring and Coaching
• Supporting Teacher Autonomy
• Mindfulness Training
• Compassion Training
• Humor Training
• Incentivizing Physical Exercise
• Individual Interventions for School Employees
• Positive and Reflective Journaling
• Self-Regulation and Coping Strategies
• Self-Affirmation
• Self Compassion Letter
• Discovering and Utilizing Character Strengths
• Job Crafting
• Mindfulness
• Additional Interventions to Consider
• Dedicated Wellbeing Spaces
• Individual Wellbeing Plans for School Employees
• Comprehensive Wellbeing Programs
• Other Resources
• Additional Wellbeing Frameworks
• Five Ways to Wellbeing
• Wellbeing Conceptual Framework (Huppert & So)
• Flourish Model
• Suggestions for Further Research
• Websites and Networks
• Scholarly Articles
• Translations

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Questions and Tasks

Citation and Embed Code

Intervention Overview

Mental time travel involves both positive reminiscence about past events, as well as positive imagination about future events. Just as with the HEAL process, practicing mental time travel motivates students to focus on and absorb the positive experiences in their lives. Encourage students to share their excitement about an upcoming vacation, birthday, or other positive event. You can also have students bring to mind a favorite memory and picture all the details of that positive event. Though this can be done in a single session, research suggests that practicing daily mental time travel, for at least two weeks, contributes to the most significant improvements in wellbeing (Quoidbach et al., 2009).

Intervention Guide

Does it work.

In one study on mental time travel, a group of 210 university students were asked to imagine four positive events that could happen the following day(Quoidbach et al., 2009). Some of the examples students shared were receiving a text message from a significant other, eating at their favorite restaurant, or getting the job they interviewed for. Participants reported a significant increase in happiness and decrease in anxiety by thinking about positive future events, as opposed to negative or neutral ones (Qoidbach et al., 2009). Quoidbach and colleagues (2010) completed an additional study the following year with 282 university students and employees in Belgian. They found that positive mental time travel, both reminiscing about the past and imagining the future, were linked to improvements in positive emotion and life satisfaction (Quoidbach et al., 2010).

References:

Quoidbach J., Berry E., & Hansenne M., & Mikolajczak M.  (2010). Positive emotion regulation and well-being: Comparing the impact of eight savoring and dampening strategies. Personality and Individual Differences , 49 (5),368-373. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.03.048.

Quoidbach, J., Wood, A.M. & Hansenne, M. (2009). Back to the future: the effect of daily practice of mental time travel into the future on happiness and anxiety. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4 (5), 349-355. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760902992365

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Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/addressing_wellbeing/mental_time_travel .

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Shayla Love

Collective Mental Time Travel Can Influence the Future

We’re often told to “be here now.” Yet the mind is rarely tethered in place. We take mental trips to our past, revisiting what happened yesterday or when we were children, or we project into an imagined future: tomorrow’s dinner date, the trajectory of our career at age 50.

Rather than a diversion from the norm of mindful presence, this tendency to internally visit other time lines, called “mental time travel,” is common; young adults, for example, think about their future an average of 59 times a day. Psychologists have suggested that this ability to time travel from the confines of our own heads is a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human.

The past and future are not locations that remain the same regardless of who is visiting and when. The way we envision our past or future is ever-changing, and the construction of these scenarios has an impact on what we do and how we think in the present. Until recently, the study of mental time travel largely focused on individuals and their personal histories. But this doesn’t reflect the social nature of our lives. Identities are comprised of groups that nestle into one another. We are part of our families and friend circles, occupational networks, countries and nations, and ethnic groups. The study of mental time travel is starting to reflect this: When we travel through time, we don’t always go alone.

Research on “collective mental time travel” shows that the way we imagine the collective future or past also impacts the present. It can sway attitudes toward policy decisions and laws, as well as how aligned people feel with their country or existing systems. It can affect a person’s willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, like voting, donating, or activism. Because of this, collective mental time travel is more than just a neat cognitive trick—it provides an opportunity to be more intentional about how we represent the collective past and future. 

In the 1980s, psychologist Endel Tulving proposed that humans have the ability to relive their past and pre-experience the future, theorizing that the same memory mechanisms were used for both. This was supported by case studies with amnesiacs: One man, “K.C.,” had brain lesions that affected his ability to retain personal memories, like a visit he’d taken to a family lake house. This patient couldn’t imagine going there in the future, despite knowing that his family owned the house.

More recent brain imaging has supported Tulving’s theory by showing that similar networks are activated when remembering the personal past and personal future, said Karl Szpunar, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Memory Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. Based on this evidence, some scientists think that we imagine the future by recombining past experiences—this is called the “constructed episodic simulation hypothesis.”

For the collective past and future, the story may be more complex. Is our collective future simply made up of fragments of the collective past? Intriguingly, when people with damage to their hippocampus, a brain region involved in personal memory, are asked about collective future events, like “What environmental concerns will the world face over the coming decade?” they are able to come up with answers. Even though their ability to mentally time travel into their personal futures was compromised, the ability to imagine events affecting a group’s future was intact. More work on this is needed, but as Spzunar and his colleague wrote, “The capacity to engage in collective future thought appears to rely on cognitive processes distinct from those involved in individual or personal future thinking.”

Jeremy White

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The collective past likely has an influence on the collective future, but only to a point, says Meymune Topcu, a visiting scholar at The New School. She’s coauthor of a recent review chapter on collective mental time travel, in which she examined numerous cases of people collectively “visiting” the past and future and looked at whether they felt positively or negatively about their mental representations and how specific the content of their time travel was.

She found that past events can influence what people imagine to happen in the collective future, but there isn’t necessarily a complete overlap. Imagined collective futures can also be less specific than memories of the collective past, Topcu said. Additionally, when we think about our own futures, we tend to have an optimism bias, but when people are asked to think about the future of their countries, they often focus more on potentially worrisome , rather than potentially exciting, possibilities. (These findings have not been found to be culturally universal: Some newer research with Chinese participants has shown that such positive and negative biases are not present in those study groups.)

On an individual level, thinking about the future is correlated with specific actions or attitudes. Studies from Hal Hershfield, a psychologist at UCLA who studies the effects of time perception, and his colleagues, have found that people who relate more to their future selves make more future-oriented decisions, like saving money for later, and have higher levels of well-being over a 10-year period. Hershfield has also asked people about their conception of how long the present is. The longer they thought “ right now ” lasted, the fewer emotions they felt about the future. People who said that the present ended sooner were more likely to make future-oriented decisions. Having a future time perspective can also predict pro-environmental attitudes, like favoring and participating in more sustainable behaviors.

If how you think about the future or present can be a guiding influence, it’s a short leap to envisioning how collective pasts and futures might be manipulated for various means. Jeremy Yamashiro, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz, said that rather than creating hard and fast rules for the best way to represent the past and the future, he’s become more sensitive to the ways people use representations in strategic ways . “It’s much more, ‘How are people using that in order to convince you of what they’re trying to convince you of?’” He said. The collective future probably isn’t based only on the building blocks of the past, but also cultural narratives , Yamashiro said.

Those narratives can have immediate and practical policy ramifications. In 2014 , social and cultural psychologist Contance de Saint-Laurent analyzed the parliamentary debates on immigration in France and found two dominant narratives for how left-wing and right-wing politicians thought about the country’s past.

The left saw the past as “a constant struggle between humanists and their adversaries,” while the right saw the central tenet of French history as the “social contract that enables co-existence in society.” Because of the way these groups viewed the past, de Saint-Laurent wrote, people on the left were more willing to see the future as an opportunity to address colonial crimes, while the others would only accept immigrants who adhered to the social contract of the country.

A person’s current reality also affects how much they focus on the future. Johanna Peetz, a social psychologist at Carleton University, has found a link between future thinking and the economic index of countries and their general quality of life. If a country’s economic index was stable or decreasing, and quality of life was declining, people did not want to look toward the future.

We could, however, think of some manipulations being wielded for good. Topcu thinks that collective future thinking could play a role in addressing intergroup conflicts. In one study , people who lived in the European Union were given different descriptions of the EU. One was an excerpt that mentioned the common heritage of European societies, the other was a narrative focusing on how the EU was a project for the future. Then the people played a game in which they had to choose to cooperate with other participants. When people saw the EU as a future-oriented project, rather than one based in the past, they were more likely to play nice.

“I’m just speculating, but if we ask people to imagine a future in a different way, or simply imagining a future where there’s more peace and cooperation between these two groups, it could have an effect on whether they would be more willing to change the present situation,” Topcu said.

This approach could be applied at a more global scale. In 2018, researchers asked people to write about their vision of the best possible overall society. People who imagined utopia-like futures ended up being less satisfied with the status quo and were less likely to justify current systems. People asked to engage in utopian thinking also reported being more willing to participate in individual and collective action to attain that future.

But the type of utopia mattered. In a follow-up study , participants were asked to imagine either a “green utopia” composed of an “ecologically friendly society that champions sustainable efficiency” or a “sci-fi utopia,” where technological advancement and material efficiency dominated. Both utopias were seen as positive, but those who imagined the green utopia were more willing to participate in social change or report that they would donate to a nonprofit. The authors speculated that it had to do with agency—those who invested in a sci-fi future envisioned technology solving every problem and may have felt less able to bring about that positive future.

This suggests that proposing a future on Mars, for example, might unintentionally lead to less action in the present than collectively imagining a different kind of future would. “When we think about techno-fixes, it’s couched in a narrative of progress,” said Piotr Szpunar, a professor in the Communication Department at the University at Albany: “a narrative that technology continuously gets better, and at the same time, that society continuously gets better, or more equitable.” This can happen within nations too, as with the story of American exceptionalism. “There’s this idea that regardless of what happens, we’re still progressing,” he said. William Hirst, professor and cochair of psychology at The New School for Social Research, described the often rigid relationship between memory and history as “mnemonic inertia,” when certain stories become sticky and have outsized weight in terms of how we think about the present and future.

The future can also modify how we view the past, a concept that psychologist Ignacio Brescó de Luna called “prolepsis,” or when “imagined futures are brought into the present by means of particular ways of reconstructing the past.” In 2018, transdisciplinary scholar Séamus A. Power interviewed people engaged in water protests in Ireland. He argued that a driving reason for their collective action was imagining a dystopic future in which water was privatized, an imagined future based on remembering past cases of privatization in Ireland.

“There is a continuous looping from the past to the future and back again, always converging on the focal point of the present,” Power wrote. There’s room for flexibility—the most important lesson currently from collective mental time travel might be how dynamic an interaction there is between our notions of future, present, and past.

No matter how we use it, collective mental time travel ultimately challenges the objective reality of our past and present. The English philosopher C.D. Broad proposed the “growing block theory of time,” which says that only the past and present are real, and the future is not. As the future becomes the present, it is added on to the “growing block of reality.” Collective mental time travel reminds us that all remembrances of the past are reconstructions to some extent, and our present is continuously being informed by the way we imagine the future and conceive of the past.

“When you can change the narrative of the past, it’s going to change the way you conceive of the future too,” Hirst said. We won’t ever be able to escape this relationship, but we can seek a better understanding of how our perceptions are influenced by mental time travel, and how the collective past and future can be tools for building a better present.

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It's shadow time! How to view the solar eclipse, online and in person

Gazing Skyward, and Awaiting a Moment of Awe

Millions of people making plans to be in the path of the solar eclipse on Monday know it will be awe-inspiring. What is that feeling?

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By Elizabeth Dias

Videos by Stella Blackmon

This article is part of The Times’s coverage of the April 8 eclipse , the last time a total solar eclipse will be visible in most of North America for 20 years.

• Published April 7, 2024 Updated April 9, 2024

The moment she saw the sun, something inside Julie McKelvey changed.

She was hanging from a rope on the side of Mt. Everest, four hours from the summit. The night was frozen, the slope some 60 degrees steep, the oxygen thin as she ascended to the highest point on earth. In the dark, she felt the fear and power of the mountain. She focused on exactly where to put her foot, her hand, alongside her fellow climbers.

Then, peripherally to her right, she saw an orange flash.

“I see this sunrise that I will never forget as long as I live,” she reflected. “The colors — it is just red, and then it is orange, and then it is yellow, and then the blue is coming. It was so incredibly spiritual for me, and beautiful.”

Ms. McKelvey, a mother and executive from central Pennsylvania, searched for words to capture the emotion of that moment. She felt so connected with something so much bigger than herself, something that she believed loved her. “The whole thing is very awe-ful. A-w-e,” she said, meaning full of awe.

On Monday, millions of people are hoping for their own sun-powered experience of awe. A total solar eclipse will sweep across North America, from Mazatlán up through Indiana to Newfoundland. More than 30 million people live in the path of totality, where for a few brief minutes the moon will entirely block out the sun, and darkness will swallow the light of day. A halo will glow white behind the moon, the sun’s corona.

Amid the rush to purchase eclipse glasses to protect one’s eyes and to check if clouds will disrupt the view, a deeper human experience is unfolding. The eclipse taps into a primal emotion, and evokes for many a sort of mystical moment and childlike wonder, as awareness of the celestial encompasses the earth. It is a present reminder to everyone, on the same day, that life can be magical.

For a nation pulled apart by every manner of division, the eclipse and the awe it inspires offers a moment of unity, if brief. It is a reminder of the collective experience of being alive, of the dance between spirituality and science, and the sheer astonishment at being part of the greater story of things.

“Astronomical phenomena have probably likely always been a source of awe and fear, from ever since Homo sapiens could stand upright and look at the night sky,” said Priyamvada Natarajan, a professor of astronomy at Yale University. “In these really turbulent times, these experiences of collective awe are probably extremely helpful in showing us to transcend the day-to-day noise and chaos of our lives, and of nations’ lives.”

In ancient days, communities in India believed an eclipse was a demon swallowing the sun, Ms. Natarajan said. But now an eclipse is an opportunity to pay homage to the explanatory power of science. And in modern secular society, it offers a sense of belonging, a collective moment like the religious expression of prayer and gratitude. “The question is about transcendence,” she said.

Even NASA, in its scientific, moment-by-moment breakdown of the eclipse, urges “stealing a peek at the people around you — many people have a deep emotional response when the sun goes into totality.”

Brother Guy Consolmagno, the director of the Vatican Observatory, the pope’s official astronomical institute that dates back to the Renaissance, hopes to see the eclipse from Indiana through his small Celestron binoculars.

He remembered the feeling of awe he felt returning from Antarctica and being able to see the Eta Carinae nebula for the first time. And the moment in the lab studying meteorites when he saw a pattern in the data that he had never before seen.

“The universe is elegant, it is beautiful, and it’s beautiful in a way that surprises you,” Brother Consolmagno said. “Maybe it’s a sense of what God is like.”

If you had no idea the eclipse was happening, it would be terrifying, he said. But when you can predict down to the second when it starts, when it will be at its maximum and when it will be finished, “it becomes a delight that I can be so in tune with the universe,” he said. “That, to me, crystallizes what it is to be a scientist, to be clever enough to predict, but then open to being surprised.”

The English word “awe” comes from early Scandinavian around the 12th century, meaning “fear, terror, dread,” at times mixed with reverence in relation to God or the divine, according to lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary . By the time of Shakespeare, the word was used in reference to great earthly rulers, the sense of fear mixed with reverence and wonder.

But by the 18th century, in the Age of Enlightenment, which emphasized reason and science, awe shifted from a religious context to the power and beauty of the natural world.

The semantics of the word are linked to fear, but awe is actually a positive emotion, said Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who wrote a book on awe.

“Awe is an emotion when you encounter things you don’t understand,” he said. “Wonder follows experiences of awe because you want to explain the mystery of it.”

The sense of the transcendence in religion is not that different from what he sees as a scientist in encountering evolution. “We are probably talking about the same experience,” Mr. Keltner said.

Today, half of American adults report feelings of loneliness, and technology disconnects people from lived physicality of the human experience. Virtual realities promised an “awesome” future but have not delivered, Mr. Keltner said, and people are hungry for something more, for transcendent emotions, for a sense of loss of self.

“There is something profound about sharing our awareness of meaningful events,” he said.

Ancient Sanskrit texts like the Bhagavad Gita mention adbhuta, describing an expression of awe and wonder that is scary, said Deepak Sarma, professor of Indian religions and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University. Even though adbhuta has something fearful in it, it is beautiful.

“Maybe something that is wonderful ought to be something feared,” said Professor Sarma, who uses the pronouns they and them. The eclipse will pass right overhead the professor’s home, and they plan to go outside and invoke various Hindu prayers and Wiccan rituals, with their partner and cat.

The eclipse is egalitarian, available to everyone, and not just humans. “All sentient creatures are going to experience this, even not sentient creatures,” they said, noting that even the stones on the ground will cool when the sun disappears.

During the 2017 total eclipse, Daniel Beverly, a postdoctoral research fellow at Indiana University, measured what happened to individual sagebrush leaves when the sun went dark. The plant showed biochemical signs of stress, as photosynthesis stopped and carbon uptake slowed, he said.

This time, he has experiments set up to measure the impact on an entire forest of sugar maples, white oaks, tulip poplars and sassafras. It is a rare chance to learn how an eclipse affects not just one individual, but an entire ecosystem, Mr. Beverly said.

“We never get to make an entire forest go dark for four minutes,” he said. “It is an opportunity to connect dots we don’t normally get to.”

Awe is found not just in the skies. The eclipse will not pass over Arizona, but at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Sarah Haas, deputy chief of science and resource management for the national park, is filled with awe looking up from the Colorado River.

“You are getting a snapshot from the bottom of the earth, looking back, the colors and the sky, from the river,” she said. “There is something very connecting to the soul about that experience.”

Away from technology and cellphone service, there is a sense of being part of the story of the canyon, carved over millions of years. Ms. Haas feels it in the smell of being in the riparian zone at the river’s edge, in the sight of how the red boulders have landed over time and in the surprises of water coming up from springs.

“The river is this living entity, that is moving and adjusting over time, and you are just on the ride of that day’s experience of the river and the rocks and the rapids,” she said.

When a group leaves to travel down the river with a group, it quickly becomes self-reliant, and strangers become family, dependent on one another for survival, Ms. Haas said.

“You have to keep in mind there are things that could hurt you, or things the canyon needs to do to evolve and to grow that you have to be aware of, like flash flooding or rockfalls,” she said.

A year after she climbed Mt. Everest, Ms. McKelvey is still unpacking the emotion of the enormity of the mountain. She recently finished another summit, becoming one of few women in the world to top the highest peaks on all seven continents.

Like the experience of the eclipse’s totality, which lasts only a few minutes, her time at the summit of Everest was brief, maybe just 20 minutes, she said. Perhaps that may be part of the revelation.

“What I am realizing is, it was the process the whole time. It was never about the top of any of the mountains,” Ms. McKelvey said.

Most awe-inspiring of all was simply being present to the moment, both to the world and to those around her as they suffered together in the cold and cheered each another on, she said.

“That is where the magic is,” she said. “I’m not living in the past, I’m not living in the future … I am just here.”

Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and culture. More about Elizabeth Dias

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2 mental health benefits of the 2024 solar eclipse, from a psychologist.

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Here’s why celestial events like the solar eclipse can improve mental well-being.

On April 8, 2024, parts of the United States, Mexico and Canada experienced a total solar eclipse. A 2022 study examining the social effects of the solar eclipse in 2017 found that such large-scale celestial events influence human behavior and mental well-being in intriguing ways.

Here are two mental health benefits of viewing solar eclipses, based on the study.

1. Eclipses Are Awe-Inspiring

Researchers found that those who were in the eclipse’s path of totality, rather than outside of it, experienced more awe.

Awe is an emotional response that involves feeling a sense of wonder, amazement and reverence when encountering something vast and extraordinary. It typically occurs when individuals are confronted with something larger than themselves or something that challenges their existing understanding of the world.

“Awe is perhaps the prototypical emotion triggered by rare, wholly immersive and visually arresting celestial events, such as a solar eclipse,” the researchers explain.

A 2022 study found that positive awe experiences such as connectedness to nature improve well-being. Experiencing awe can also significantly reduce stress and somatic health symptoms and encourage individuals to focus less on material concerns and more on meaningful experiences, leading to greater fulfillment.

Furthermore, awe-inducing experiences strongly anchor individuals to the present moment. This heightened state of mindfulness can reduce rumination and worrying about the past or future, leading to a calmer and more centered state of mind.

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Here are a few ways to make the most of these mental health benefits.

• Savor the moment. During the solar eclipse, those who mindfully experienced the moment benefited the most. Observing the changing light, the sounds around you and the reactions of others makes you feel like a part of a larger narrative. Engaging your senses can deepen the impact of the experience and enhance feelings of awe.
• Reflect on your experience. Take time to reflect on the personal significance of the solar eclipse. Consider the vastness of the universe, the beauty of nature and your place within it.
• Integrate awe into daily life. Seek out other opportunities for awe-inspiring experiences in your everyday life. Spend time in nature, visit art museums, attend concerts or explore new places.
• Practice gratitude. Take a moment to express gratitude for the opportunity to witness something extraordinary. Gratitude can amplify the positive effects of awe, contributing to a more optimistic outlook on life.

2. Eclipses Enhance Social Connection

Research shows that one in 10 Americans struggle with loneliness everyday. Researchers of the 2022 study suggest that fascinating events like a solar eclipse are vital reminders of the grandeur, complexity and interconnectedness of the universe and the human experience.

The authors found that participants who exhibited more awe in response to the solar eclipse became less self-focused and displayed more prosocial and affiliative behavior, humility and feelings of oneness with others compared to pre-eclipse levels.

Being in the presence of something larger or greater than oneself can create a diminished sense of self-importance and encourage us to tap into the power of shared experiences as a collective species, which aid in the fight against loneliness. Such events foster stronger connections with one’s community, humanity and the universe itself, creating a sense of interpersonal trust, shared meaning and social cooperation .

An event like the 2024 total solar eclipse tends to bring people together by enabling them to share ... [+] a unique moment. This can help people appreciate the value of community.

Research shows that awe-inspiring events also help individuals tap into their “ quiet ego state ,” where one can consider their own well-being as well as that of others, stay mindful of their emotional experiences without becoming overwhelmed, understand diverse viewpoints without judgment and prioritize an interconnected worldview and a mindset of personal growth.

The quiet ego state is in turn associated with optimal psychological well-being, greater resilience, authenticity and improved social relationships.

“Just as the moon aligned with the sun up in the heavens, people down on earth aligned with each other in awe of this spectacular celestial event,” the researchers reminisce.

Those who watched the solar eclipse with others—friends, family or fellow enthusiasts—were probably able to tap into these feelings of interconnectedness most deeply. Keep discussing your thoughts and feelings with others afterward to deepen the experience.

Solar eclipses are not only a visual spectacle of a rare cosmic event but an opportunity to pause, reflect and be humbled by the vastness and beauty of the universe.

Feeling like a whole new person since the solar eclipse? You might score high on this personality trait: Openness To Experience Scale

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April 2, 2024

Eclipse Psychology: When the Sun and Moon Align, So Do We

How a total solar eclipse creates connection, unity and caring among the people watching

By Katie Weeman

Students observing a partial solar eclipse on June 21, 2020, in Lhokseumawe, Aceh Province, Indonesia.

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This article is part of a special report on the total solar eclipse that will be visible from parts of the U.S., Mexico and Canada on April 8, 2024.

It was 11:45 A.M. on August 21, 2017. I was in a grassy field in Glendo, Wyo., where I was surrounded by strangers turned friends, more than I could count—and far more people than had ever flocked to this town, population 210 or so. Golden sunlight blanketed thousands of cars parked in haphazard rows all over the rolling hills. The shadows were quickly growing longer, the air was still, and all of our faces pointed to the sky. As the moon progressively covered the sun, the light melted away, the sky blackened, and the temperature dropped. At the moment of totality, when the moon completely covered the sun , some people around me suddenly gasped. Some cheered; some cried; others laughed in disbelief.

Exactly 53 minutes later, in a downtown park in Greenville, S.C., the person who edited this story and the many individuals around him reacted in exactly the same ways.

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When a total solar eclipse descends—as one will across Mexico, the U.S. and Canada on April 8—everyone and everything in the path of totality are engulfed by deep shadow. Unlike the New Year’s Eve countdown that lurches across the globe one blocky time zone after another, the shadow of totality is a dark spot on Earth that measures about 100 miles wide and cruises steadily along a path, covering several thousand miles in four to five hours. The human experiences along that path are not isolated events any more than individual dominoes are isolated pillars in a formation. Once that first domino is tipped, we are all linked into something bigger—and unstoppable. We all experience the momentum and the awe together.

When this phenomenon progresses from Mexico through Texas, the Great Lakes and Canada on April 8, many observers will describe the event as life-changing, well beyond expectations. “You feel a sense of wrongness in those moments before totality , when your surroundings change so rapidly,” says Kate Russo, an author, psychologist and eclipse chaser. “Our initial response is to ask ourselves, ‘Is this an opportunity or a threat?’ When the light changes and the temperature drops, that triggers primal fear. When we have that threat response, our whole body is tuned in to taking in as much information as possible.”

Russo, who has witnessed 13 total eclipses and counting, has interviewed eclipse viewers from around the world. She continues to notice the same emotions felt by all. They begin with that sense of wrongness and primal fear as totality approaches. When totality starts, we feel powerful awe and connection to the world around us. A sense of euphoria develops as we continue watching, and when it’s over, we have a strong desire to seek out the next eclipse.

“The awe we feel during a total eclipse makes us think outside our sense of self. It makes you more attuned to things outside of you,” says Sean Goldy, a postdoctoral fellow at the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Goldy and his team analyzed Twitter data from nearly 2.9 million people during the 2017 total solar eclipse. They found that people within the path of totality were more likely to use not only language that expressed awe but also language that conveyed being unified and affiliated with others. That meant using more “we” words (“us” instead of “me”) and more humble words (“maybe” instead of “always”).

“During an eclipse, people have a broader, more collective focus,” Goldy says. “We also found that the more people expressed awe, the more likely they were to use those ‘we’ words, indicating that people who experience this emotion feel more connected with others.”

This connectivity ties into a sociological concept known as “collective effervescence,” Russo and Goldy say. When groups of humans come together over a shared experience, the energy is greater than the sum of its parts. If you’ve ever been to a large concert or sporting event, you’ve felt the electricity generated by a hive of humans. It magnifies our emotions.

I felt exactly that unified feeling in the open field in Glendo, as if thousands of us were breathing as one. But that’s not the only way people can experience a total eclipse.

During the 2008 total eclipse in Mongolia “I was up on a peak,” Russo recounts. “I was with only my husband and a close friend. We had left the rest of our 25-person tour group at the bottom of the hill. From that vantage point, when the shadow came sweeping in, there was not one man-made thing I could see: no power lines, no buildings or structures. Nothing tethered me to time: It could have been thousands of years ago or long into the future. In that moment, it was as if time didn’t exist.”

Giving us the ability to unhitch ourselves from time—to stop dwelling on time is a unique superpower of a total eclipse. In Russo’s work as a clinical psychologist, she notices patterns in our modern-day mentality. “People with anxiety tend to spend a lot of time in the future. And people with depression spend a lot of time in the past,” she says. An eclipse, time and time again, has the ability to snap us back into the present, at least for a few minutes. “And when you’re less anxious and worried, it opens you up to be more attuned to other people, feel more connected, care for others and be more compassionate,” Goldy says.

Russo, who founded Being in the Shadow , an organization that provides information about total solar eclipses and organizes eclipse events around the world, has experienced this firsthand. Venue managers regularly tell her that eclipse crowds are among the most polite and humble: they follow the rules; they pick up their garbage—they care.

Eclipses remind us that we are part of something bigger, that we are connected with something vast. In the hours before and after totality you have to wear protective glasses to look at the sun, to prevent damage to your eyes. But during the brief time when the moon blocks the last of the sun’s rays, you can finally lower your glasses and look directly at the eclipse. It’s like making eye contact with the universe.

“In my practice, usually if someone says, ‘I feel insignificant,’ that’s a negative thing. But the meaning shifts during an eclipse,” Russo says. To feel insignificant in the moon’s shadow instead means that your sense of self shrinks, that your ego shrinks, she says.

The scale of our “big picture” often changes after witnessing the awe of totality, too. “When you zoom out—really zoom out—it blows away our differences,” Goldy says. When you sit in the shadow of a celestial rock blocking the light of a star 400 times its size that burns at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface, suddenly that argument with your partner, that bill sitting on your counter or even the differences among people’s beliefs, origins or politics feel insignificant. When we shift our perspective, connection becomes boundless.

You don’t need to wait for the next eclipse to feel this way. As we travel through life, we lose our relationship with everyday awe. Remember what that feels like? It’s the way a dog looks at a treat or the way my toddler points to the “blue sky!” outside his car window in the middle of rush hour traffic. To find awe, we have to surrender our full attention to the beauty around us. During an eclipse, that comes easily. In everyday life, we may need to be more intentional.

“Totality kick-starts our ability to experience wonder,” Russo says. And with that kick start, maybe we can all use our wonderment faculties more—whether that means pausing for a moment during a morning walk, a hug or a random sunset on a Tuesday. In the continental U.S., we won’t experience another total eclipse until 2044. Let’s not wait until then to seek awe and connection.

Your last-minute guide to Monday's total solar eclipse

A total solar eclipse will cross North America on Monday , offering millions a rare opportunity to see afternoon skies temporarily darken as the moon blocks the face of the sun.

Tune into NBC News NOW as Lester Holt hosts a two-hour special at 2 p.m. ET Monday from Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The eclipse's path fortuitously cuts across Mexico, 15 U.S. states and a small part of eastern Canada. In all other states in the continental U.S., viewers will be treated to a partial solar eclipse, with the moon appearing to take a bite out of the sun and obscuring part of its light.

Here’s everything you need to know about the rare celestial event.

What is a solar eclipse?

Solar eclipses occur when the sun, moon and Earth align. The moon passes between Earth and sun, temporarily blocking the sun’s light and casting a shadow on Earth.

A total solar eclipse is when the moon fully obscures the sun, whereas a partial solar eclipse means it blocks just a portion of the sun’s face.

Solar eclipses occur only with the new moon. Because the moon’s orbit around Earth is tilted, the three bodies don’t always line up in a way that creates an eclipse.

“Imagine if the moon’s orbit were in the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun — if that were the case, then every new moon, you’d have a total solar eclipse and every full moon, you’d have a lunar eclipse,” Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, told NBC News. “So, because things don’t always align, it lends to the rarity of the event and the specialness of the event.”

Where and when will the eclipse be visible?

This year’s eclipse will follow a slightly wider path over more populated areas of the continental U.S. than other total solar eclipses have in the recent past.

NASA estimates that 31.6 million people live within what’s known as the path of totality, where the total solar eclipse will be visible. An additional 150 million people live within 200 miles of the path, according to the agency.

The path travels through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Tiny parts of Michigan and Tennessee will also be able to witness totality if conditions are clear.

After the eclipse crosses into Canada, it will pass over southern Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, at the eastern end of Nova Scotia.

Those outside the path of totality can still take part in the astronomical event by viewing a partial solar eclipse — visible throughout all 48 states of the contiguous U.S. — or a NASA livestream.

The timing, including how long totality lasts, depends on the location, but some spots will see the moon fully cover the sun for up to 4 minutes and 28 seconds.

Below is a list of timings for some cities along the path of totality, as  provided by NASA . A number of other resources, including NationalEclipse.com  and  TimeandDate.com , can also help people plan.

• Dallas: Partial eclipse begins at 12:23 p.m. CT and totality at 1:40 p.m.
• Little Rock, Arkansas: Partial eclipse begins at 12:33 p.m. CT and totality at 1:51 p.m.
• Cleveland: Partial eclipse begins at 1:59 p.m. ET and totality at 3:13 p.m.
• Buffalo, New York: Partial eclipse begins at 2:04 p.m. ET and totality at 3:18 p.m.
• Lancaster, New Hampshire: Partial eclipse begins at 2:16 p.m. ET and totality at 3:27 p.m.

How to safely view a solar eclipse

It is never safe to gaze directly at the sun, even when it is partly or mostly covered by the moon. Special eclipse glasses or  pinhole projectors  are required to safely view solar eclipses and prevent eye damage. Failing to take the proper precautions can result in severe eye injury,  according to NASA .

Eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than normal sunglasses and specially made to enable wearers to look at the sun during these kinds of celestial events.

Sky-watchers should also never view any part of the sun through binoculars, telescopes or camera lenses unless they have specific solar filters attached. Eclipse glasses should not be used with these devices, as they will not provide adequate protection.

However, during the few minutes of totality, when the moon is fully blocking the sun, it is safe to look with the naked eye.

Beware of fake eclipse glasses. On legitimate pairs, the lenses should have a silver appearance on the front and be black on the inside. The manufacturer’s name and address should be clearly labeled, and they should not be torn or punctured. Check, as well, for the ISO logo and the code “IS 12312-2” printed on the inside.

If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can make a homemade pinhole projector, which lets sunlight in through a small hole, focuses it and projects it onto a piece of paper, wall or other surface to create an image of the sun that is safe to look at. 

All you need is two pieces of white cardboard or plain white paper, aluminum foil and a pin or thumbtack. Cut a 1- to 2-inch square or rectangle out of the center of a piece of white paper or cardboard. Tape aluminum foil over that cut-out shape, then use a pin or thumbtack to poke a tiny hole in the foil.

During the eclipse, place a second piece of white paper or cardboard on the ground as a screen and hold the projector with the foil facing up and your back to the sun. Adjusting how far you hold the projector from the second piece of paper will alter the size of the image on the makeshift screen.

What to look for while viewing the total solar eclipse

For people along the path of totality, there are some fun milestones to keep track of as the total solar eclipse unfolds.

As the eclipse progresses and the sun gets thinner in the sky, it will start to get eerily dark, according to Tyson.

When the last beams of sunlight are about to become obscured, look out for the “diamond ring effect”: The sun’s atmosphere will appear as an illuminated halo, and the last light still visible will look like the diamond of a giant ring.

As the sunlight decreases even further, an effect known as Baily’s beads will be created by the moon’s rugged terrain. Tiny “beads” of light will be visible for only a few seconds around the dark moon, as the last bits of sunlight peer through the moon’s mountains and valleys.

When the moon is fully blocking the sun, it is safe to remove eclipse glasses and look at the total solar eclipse with the naked eye.

Some lucky sky-watchers may even catch a glimpse of a comet .

Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks — nicknamed the “ devil comet ” because an eruption last year left it with two distinct trails of gas and ice in the shape of devil horns — is currently visible from the Northern Hemisphere as it swings through the inner solar system.

The comet can be seen in the early evenings by gazing toward the west-northwest horizon. During the eclipse, when skies darken during totality, it may be possible to see the comet near Jupiter, but its visibility will depend on whether it’s in the middle of an outburst and thus brighter than normal.

Most likely, all eyes will be on the alignment of the moon and sun.

“Most people won’t even notice,” Tyson said. “But if you know to look, it’s there.”

When is the next solar eclipse?

The next total solar eclipse will be in 2026, but it will mostly pass over the Arctic Ocean, with some visibility in Greenland, Iceland, Portugal and northern Spain. In 2027, a total solar eclipse will be visible in Spain and a swath of northern Africa.

The next total solar eclipse visible from North America will be in 2033, but only over Alaska. Then in 2044, a total solar eclipse will cross Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, parts of Canada and Greenland.

The next total solar eclipse to cross the continental U.S. coast-to-coast in will occur in 2045. The path of totality for that eclipse will cut through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

Lucas Thompson is a content producer for the NBC News Climate Unit.

Migratory birds could cause avian influenza in Northwest dairy cattle

Northwest dairy cattle eat rations out of a feed bunk.

Karla Salp / (Credit: Washington State Department of Agriculture)

Experts say they are not sure how the highly-pathogenic avian influenza is passed among dairy cattle yet, but birds and cattle mingle a lot more than you would think.

Perhaps it’s that wild birds, really hungry now as they migrate and come out of winter, are looking for an easy meal. Dairy cow feed includes corn, grains and supplements, which attract the hungry birds.

“Avian influenza is everywhere,” said Amber Itle, veterinarian for the Washington State Department of Agriculture. “Because it’s ubiquitous, we need to be considering the fact that the risk is in our backyard right now, always, everyday.”

Itle said birds will really start moving in the next few months. She said now is the time for farmers to further tighten biosecurity .

Cattle health and biosecurity

So far, bird flu has sickened about 10% of the dairy cattle in the herds that have gotten avian influenza across the United States. Experts say most cattle make a full recovery. In poultry, this same virus causes high mortality rates, but in dairy cattle that is not being reported.

Federal recommendations for biosecurity include: trying to deter birds from getting into barns or areas where there are cattle, managing the movements of cattle and isolating new animals for 21 days upon arrival, keeping all species of animals, such as poultry, pigs, cattle separate, and keeping cats, dogs and wildlife out of barns.

Related: What to know about the risks of a bird flu outbreak

Bird flu in cattle background

So far, highly pathogenic avian influenza has sickened cattle in Idaho, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Ohio and Michigan. There have been no reports of sick cattle with bird flu in Washington or Oregon, those state agriculture officials said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and state officials are working together in several groups to better understand the disease transfer from birds to cattle and from cattle to people.

Much of the disease appears to be infecting the animals’ udders, with calves and male cattle not contracting the disease because they don’t have developed udders, Itle said.

Just one person in Texas has been confirmed to have gotten sick from cattle infected with the disease. One man's eyes got red after he was exposed to sick cattle. This is only the second known case of the virus transferring to humans, according to National Public Radio.

Still, much is unknown about the avian flu in cattle, how the disease is being transferred from bovine to bovine, and how it’s being spread to people.

In Texas, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said they are finding bird flu and dead grackles, blackbirds and pigeons, which are difficult to keep out of dairy barns.

Bird flu also has sickened a lot of other animals across the world, including marine mammals in South America, and there is a reported mink farm outbreak in Europe, according to NPR .

What about the milk?

It’s standard practice to remove sick animals from the milking string in the nation’s dairies, Itle said. Sick animals tend not to give much milk anyway, she said.

The virus can be found in the milk of sick cows but the sick animals’ milk is disposed of. In addition, pasteurizing milk kills viruses and bacteria, making commercial milk safe to consume at this time, according to the USDA.

Related: As bird flu spreads among dairy cows across the US, Oregon keeps a close eye

Northwest dairy industry

Avian flu in cattle is definitely concerning to the dairy industry across the Northwest and United States.

Steve Seppi is the executive director of the Dairy Farmers of Washington, a quasi-state commodity commission. He said the milk production from an infected animal drops significantly for nearly three weeks. The animals tend to produce thick colostrum-type milk that’s very concentrated. This not only hurts herd health but also farmers’ profitability.

“Dairy farmers operate on pretty thin margins, especially in the last couple years with inflation and high input costs, especially feed costs,” he said. “Farmers are taking it seriously. They are taking precautions, biosecurity cautions and moving cattle precautions to keep this disease out of their herds.”

Seppi also said milk prices are down from 2022. Washington farmers export almost half of what's in the state, much of it powdered, to top markets such as Mexico, Indonesia and Japan.

“Everything is a little more expensive these days, and prices aren’t keeping up,” Seppi said.

Seppi added that many farms are upping their requirements on hand washing, boot washing, and other biosecurity measures. Some farmers are even putting up speakers in barns with hawk calls to scare away birds or using dummies of coyotes or wolves in fields to keep waterfowl at bay.

“The last couple of years have been tough for our farmers,” Seppi said. “The last thing they are looking for right now, is added economic pressure of something like a drop in production for something like avian influenza. They’re taking it seriously.”

Related: For the first time, U.S. dairy cows have tested positive for bird flu

Human mental health also a worry

Northwest dairies are already hurting from low milk prices, Itle said. So those operators can’t likely afford a highly-pathogenic avian influenza outbreak in their cattle. In the Northwest so far, one dairy in Idaho has a confirmed case of bird flu in cattle, according to the USDA.

Itle said she also worries about the mental health of dairy farmers and dairy workers, especially if bird flu were to become more of a problem in Northwest cattle.

“They truly care about their animals,” Itle said of farmers. “They really care about the environment and trying to be sustainable. They have all these pressures and regulatory burdens they have to overcome. Something like this, that has that uncertainty, can be enough to push someone over the edge.”

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What to know about the risks of a bird flu outbreak

Cattle are getting sick with H5N1, and one person got sick in Texas. How bad could this be for dairy farms? Could it spread among people? Here's what scientists are learning.

As bird flu spreads among dairy cows across the US, Oregon keeps a close eye

A handful of dairy herds have tested positive for a strain of bird flu across five states so far — including Idaho. Oregon Agriculture officials say they are developing a plan to respond if the virus comes here.

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Streaming Now

When is Eid al-Fitr 2024 and how is it celebrated?

The three-day festival celebrates the completion of the fasting month of Ramadan by Muslims across the world.

As a new moon was not sighted on Monday evening after Maghrib prayers, Muslims in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring countries will fast one more day, completing 30 days of Ramadan. The first day of Eid will then be celebrated on Wednesday, April 10.

The first day of Eid al-Fitr is determined by the sighting of the crescent moon marking the start of the month of Shawwal, the 10th month of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar.

Keep reading

A ramadan no palestinian will ever forget, the cost of a ramadan iftar meal around the world, ramadan 2024: where do your dates come from, in washington, dc: celebrating ramadan, protesting israel’s siege of gaza.

Lunar months last between 29 and 30 days so Muslims usually have to wait until the night before Eid to verify its date.

Other countries follow independent sightings.

When the sighting has been verified, Eid is declared on television, radio stations and at mosques.

How do Muslims celebrate Eid?

Traditionally, Eid is celebrated for three days as an official holiday in Muslim-majority countries. However, the number of holiday days varies by country.

Muslims begin Eid day celebrations by partaking in a prayer service that takes place shortly after dawn, followed by a short sermon.

On their way to the prayer, which is traditionally held in an open area, Muslims recite takbeerat, praising God by saying “Allahu Akbar”, meaning “God is great”.

It is customary to eat something sweet before the prayer, such as date -filled biscuits known as maamoul in the Middle East. This particular festival is known as the “sweet” Eid – and the distribution of sweets is common across the Muslim world.

Muslims usually spend the day visiting relatives and neighbours and accepting sweets as they move around from house to house.

Each country has traditional desserts and sweets that are prepared before Eid or on the morning of the first day.

Children, dressed in new clothes, are offered gifts and money to celebrate the joyous occasion.

Girls and women in many countries decorate their hands with henna. The celebration for Eid begins the night before as women gather in neighbourhoods and large family gatherings for the application of henna.

In some countries, families visit graveyards to offer their respects to departed family members right after the morning prayers.

It is common for Muslim-majority countries to decorate their cities with lights and hold festivities to commemorate the end of the fasting month.

Eid amid the onslaught in Gaza

For some 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza this Eid, this will be the first Muslim religious holiday after more than 33,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks. With little food aid, and very limited water, Gaza’s Eid al-Fitr will be mired in destruction amid the continuing attacks.

What are common Eid greetings?

The most popular greeting is “Eid Mubarak” (Blessed Eid) or “Eid sa’id” (Happy Eid). Eid greetings also vary depending on the country and language.

The video below shows how people say Eid Mubarak in different languages around the world.