Episodic Future Thinking and Compassion

Episodic Future Thinking and Compassion Reduce Public Health Guideline Noncompliance Urges: A Randomised Controlled Trial

During the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) pandemic, public health departments have issued guidelines to limit viral transmission. In this environment, people will feel urges to engage in activities that violate these guidelines, but research on guideline adherence has been reliant on surveys asking people to self-report their typical behaviour, which may fail to capture these urges as they unfold. Guideline adherence could be improved through behaviour change interventions, but considering the wide range of behaviours that COVID-19 guidelines prescribe, there are few methods that allow observing changes of aggregate guideline adherence in the 'wild'. In order to administer interventions and to obtain contemporaneous data on a wide range of behaviours, the researchers use ecological momentary assessment. In this preregistered parallel randomised trial, 95 participants aged 18-65 from the United Kingdom were assigned to three conditions using blinded block randomisation, and engage in episodic future thinking (n = 33), compassion exercises (n = 31), or a sham procedure (n = 31) and report regularly on the intensity of their occurrent urges (min. 1, max. 10) and their ability to control them. The researchers investigate whether state impulsivity and vaccine attitudes predict guideline adherence, while assessing through which mechanism these predictors affect behaviour.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Impulsive Behavior; Compliant Behavior; Self-Control
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Episodic Future Thinking; Behavioral: Compassion Training; Behavioral: Sham

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 95
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United Kingdom
  • Oxford, United Kingdom
    • Prolific online participant recruitment platform

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 65 years (ADULT, OLDER_ADULT)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Resides in the United Kingdom
• Fluent in English
• Must pass attention check in eligibility survey

Exclusion Criteria:

• Less than 50% compliance with ecological momentary assessment surveys

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: PREVENTION
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Interventional Model: PARALLEL
• Masking: SINGLE

Number of Arms

3

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
EXPERIMENTAL: Episodic Future Thinking	Behavioral: Episodic Future Thinking; Participants are invited to imagine themselves in a positive situation after COVID-19 public health restrictions and guidelines are lifted. They are then reminded that their actions are able to change how soon this future can be achieved.
EXPERIMENTAL: Compassion	Behavioral: Compassion Training; Participants are invited to imagine themselves in someone else's situation, who is in a bad situation due to COVID-19 (e.g., ER nurse, family of someone in ICU). They are then reminded that their decisions have an impact on the occurrence of these situations.
SHAM_COMPARATOR: Control	Behavioral: Sham; Participants are invited to reflect on some COVID-19 related news, and reminded that their actions have bearing on the COVID-19 situation.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Average strength of urges in ecological momentary assessment surveys	Throughout each day, participants would receive 5 ecological momentary assessment surveys that were available for 1 hour. In randomised order, they were asked whether since the last survey they had felt an urge to not wash their hands, not cover their mouths when coughing or sneezing, not socially distance (e.g. to hug, shake hands), not leave details for contact tracing, or whether they had felt an urge to leave their house, touch their face, or avoid getting tested when it would have been better to do the opposite - from a COVID-19 standpoint. Participants responded using a slider [0,10], where 0 indicated no urge, 1 indicated a very weak urge, and 10 indicated a very strong urge.	Multiple times per day, for one week.
Average probability of controlling urges in ecological momentary assessment surveys	Throughout each day, participants would receive 5 ecological momentary assessment surveys that were available for 1 hour. In randomised order, they were asked whether since the last survey they had felt an urge to not wash their hands, not cover their mouths when coughing or sneezing, not socially distance (e.g. to hug, shake hands), not leave details for contact tracing, or whether they had felt an urge to leave their house, touch their face, or avoid getting tested when it would have been better to do the opposite - from a COVID-19 standpoint. Participants responded using a slider [0,10], where 0 indicated no urge, 1 indicated a very weak urge, and 10 indicated a very strong urge. Following that urge, participants are asked whether they gave in to that urge.	Multiple times per day, for one week.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Average number of resisted urges	Throughout each day, participants would receive 5 ecological momentary assessment surveys that were available for 1 hour. In randomised order, they were asked whether since the last survey they had felt an urge to not wash their hands, not cover their mouths when coughing or sneezing, not socially distance (e.g. to hug, shake hands), not leave details for contact tracing, or whether they had felt an urge to leave their house, touch their face, or avoid getting tested when it would have been better to do the opposite - from a COVID-19 standpoint. Participants responded using a slider [0,10], where 0 indicated no urge, 1 indicated a very weak urge, and 10 indicated a very strong urge. Following that urge, participants are asked whether they tried to resist that urge.	Multiple times per day, for one week.

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Monash University
• Collaborators: Martin & Loreto Hosking's Three Springs Foundation; Australian Research Council

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (ACTUAL): March 29, 2021
• Primary Completion (ACTUAL): April 4, 2021
• Study Completion (ACTUAL): April 4, 2021

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: August 23, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 26, 2021
• First Posted (ACTUAL): September 2, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (ACTUAL): September 2, 2021
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: August 26, 2021
• Last Verified: August 1, 2021

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Impulsivity; Public Health; Pandemic; Compassion; Self-control; Episodic future thinking
• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Impulsive Behavior
• Other Study ID Numbers: 26253

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: Deidentified data are available on the Open Science Foundation (OSF) website.
• IPD Sharing Time Frame: The data are permanently available.
• IPD Sharing Supporting Information Type: STUDY_PROTOCOL; SAP; ANALYTIC_CODE

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No