Archive for February 4th, 2012

Consideration of Future Consequences

Posted on February 4, 2012. Filed under: anxiety, attention, blame, choice, Conflict, control, frustration, happy, Health, hostility, learning, life, probem solving, stress, tension, thinking, thoughts | Tags: attention, change, choice, control, decision making, health, helplessness, Life, perspective, powerless, relationships, resentment, stress, thinking |

Consideration of Future Consequences Scale

For each of the statements below, please indicate whether or not the statement is characteristic of you. If the statement is extremely uncharacteristic of you (not at all like you) please fill-in a “1″ on the answer sheet; if the statement is extremely characteristic of you (very much like you) please fill-in a “5″ . And, of course, use the numbers in the middle if you fall between the extremes. Please keep the following scale in mind as you rate each of the statements below.

1=extremely uncharacteristic

2=somewhat uncharacteristic

3=uncertain

4=somewhat characteristic

5=extremely characteristic

___1. I consider how things might be in the future, and try to influence those things with my day to day behavior.

___2. Often I engage in a particular behavior in order to achieve outcomes that may not result for many years.

___3. I only act to satisfy immediate concerns, figuring the future will take care of itself.

___4. My behavior is only influenced by the immediate (i.e., a matter of days or weeks) outcomes of my actions.

___5. My convenience is a big factor in the decisions I make or the actions I take.

___6. I am willing to sacrifice my immediate happiness or well-being in order to achieve future outcomes.

___7. I think it is important to take warnings about negative outcomes seriously even if the negative outcome will not occur for many years.

___8. I think it is more important to perform a behavior with important distant consequences than a behavior with less-important immediate consequences.

___9. I generally ignore warnings about possible future problems because I think the problems will be resolved before they reach crisis level.

___10. I think that sacrificing now is usually unnecessary since future outcomes can be dealt with at a later time.

___11. I only act to satisfy immediate concerns, figuring that I will take care of future problems that may occur at a later date.

___12. Since my day to day work has specific outcomes, it is more important to me than behavior that has distant outcomes.

Scoring — Generally, the CFC Scale is scored so that higher numbers indicate a greater consideration of future consequences. To do this, items 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 should be reverse-scored. This can be done by creating a new variable which is “6-response” for each of the reverse-scored items. These seven new variables should then be summed along with the five items which need not be reversed (items 1, 2, 6, 7, 8).