The Life Stories and Episodic Future Thinking of Inmates

People explain who they are, assume where their life flows by revising stories about their past and by imagining future. Generally, inmates, have been shown, to be overwhelmed by events during their time in detention that the consequences of which (e.g., loss, social exclusion, violence) leave a traumatic trail (e.g., Anderson et al., 2016; Crew, 2015; Segrave & Carlton, 2010). It is known that traumatic experiences leave a hallmark on memory processes (e.g., Kleim et al., 2014). However, we go beyond other research and examine past and future life story events that is unexplored in the literature. Therefore, the present study aims to: 1. to compare the life stories (LST events) of inmates and community samples, 2. to examine the differences in phenomenological characteristics between past and future LST events, 3. To look for the interaction between group and event type, 4. to consider individual differences of inmates and community members and examine how increased psychopathic tendencies is associated with inmates’ memory. To achieve this, 95 inmates and 135 community members participated in this study. They were asked to generate most important 5 past and 5 future LST events that happened/might happen (Past and Future Life Story Events Task), questions from the Autobiographical Questionnaire Scale, the short version of Centrality of Event scale, the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale -21. The findings mostly supported earlier some existing claims regarding the properties of past events between inmates and community members. Specifically, we found out that the valence of ratings of inmates were less positive, less specific and more central to their life story and identity compare to community sample. In addition, inmates’ future LST events were temporally closer to present time, more positive, more specific and consisted of more sensory details. However, increased psychopathic traits has minor effect on memory process. Increased psychopathic traits were associated with centrality of LST events to inmates’ identity and life story. Taken together, our study supported that imprisonment is an anchoring event that affects how individuals remember and imagine LST events.