Consideration of Future Consequences Scale

1. Abstract

The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale (CFC) is an established psychometric assessment developed to operationalize the extent to which human beings anticipate, evaluate, and weigh the proximal versus distant outcomes of their immediate behaviors. Originally conceptualized in social and personality psychology by Alan Strathman and colleagues in 1994, the construct captures the continuous intrapersonal struggle between pursuing immediate gratification and exercising self-regulatory control to secure long-term utility. Although the measurement paradigm historically assumed a unidimensional continuum, contemporary structural equation modeling and empirical investigations have substantiated a bi-dimensional architecture comprising two distinct, correlated subscales: CFC-Immediate (the tendency to prioritize proximal satisfaction, convenience, and short-term resolution) and CFC-Future (the conscious anticipation of distant repercussions, investment in prospective goals, and willingness to sacrifice current comfort).

This comprehensive psychometric review explores the theoretical foundation, structural evolution, and cross-cultural psychometric performance of the CFC scale, with specific emphasis on its contemporary adaptations, including the refined 10-item measurement model validated among Southeast Asian populations by Long She, Lan Ma, and Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani (2021). Evaluated across diverse demographics, clinical cohorts, and cultural contexts, the CFC scale has demonstrated robust psychometric integrity. The bi-dimensional framework exhibits superior composite reliability (CR) and internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha (α) and McDonald’s omega (ω) values consistently exceeding 0.85 across both dimensions. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) have established rigorous construct validity, convergent validity via Average Variance Extracted (AVE), and discriminant validity using the Fornell-Larcker criterion alongside the conservative Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio below the standard 0.85 threshold. Across organizational, health, environmental, and behavioral economics domains, the scale remains an indispensable tool for diagnosing temporal discounting, impulsivity, and goal-directed self-governance.

2. Keywords

Consideration of Future Consequences, CFC-14, CFC-12, psychometrics, temporal discounting, time perspective, cross-cultural validation, self-regulation, delay of gratification, factor analysis, latent measurement model, structural equation modeling

3. Authors

The theoretical framework and original 12-item formulation of the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale were developed by:

• Alan Strathman, Ph.D. — Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States.
• Faith Gleicher, Ph.D. — Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States.
• David S. Boninger, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States.
• C. Scott Edwards, M.A. — Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States.

Subsequent psychometric developments, structural re-specifications into bi-dimensional models, and contemporary cross-cultural validations have been conducted by leading psychometricians and behavioral researchers across the globe, including:

• Jeff Joireman, Ph.D. — Department of Marketing and International Business, Carson College of Business, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States (architect of the bi-dimensional CFC-14 model).
• Long She, Ph.D. — School of Business and Management, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, Kuching, Malaysia.
• Lan Ma, Ph.D. — Faculty of Business, Design and Arts, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus, Kuching, Malaysia.
• Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani, Ph.D. (Corresponding Author) — Department of Psychiatric Nursing and Management, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran (Email: [email protected]).

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale is to operationalize individual differences in how people resolve intertemporal dilemmas—decisions involving trade-offs between costs and benefits occurring at divergent points in time. Human survival and societal prospering fundamentally hinge upon delayed gratification, foresight, and systematic planning. However, individuals exhibit pronounced variability in their cognitive and motivational sensitivity to immediate outcomes versus prospective consequences. The CFC scale serves as a standardized, reliable, and mathematically rigorous instrument to quantify these cognitive-motivational predispositions, shedding light on why specific individuals readily forfeit present comfort to protect their future well-being, whereas others remain captive to short-term impulses and immediate gratification.

From a behavioral and clinical perspective, temporal myopia represents a core transdiagnostic vulnerability factor. In clinical and counseling psychology, high sensitivity to immediate outcomes alongside deficient future orientation is strongly linked to maladaptive impulse-control patterns, substance dependence, pathological gambling, binge eating, and clinical non-adherence to medical regimens. Clinicians leverage the CFC scale to determine whether an individual’s dysfunctional behaviors stem from a failure to cognitively appreciate future dangers or from an overwhelming, compulsive drive toward immediate hedonic reward. Disentangling these mechanisms enables therapists to tailor interventions—such as episodic future thinking exercises, contingency management, or acceptance and commitment strategies—to target the specific temporal dimension driving the pathology.

In applied research, the CFC construct possesses exceptional predictive utility across diverse ecological domains:

• Preventive Health Behaviors: Predicting adherence to long-term exercise routines, healthy nutritional habits, cancer screenings, and vaccine uptake, where immediate physical or psychological inconvenience must be sustained to secure future morbidity reduction.
• Financial Well-Being and Economic Decisions: Accounting for personal savings rates, retirement planning, debt accumulation, credit card mismanagement, and compulsive consumer purchasing behavior.
• Environmental and Pro-Environmental Action: Explaining engagement in conservation programs, sustainable consumption, recycling behaviors, and support for climate change mitigation policies, where immediate personal sacrifices yield abstract, collective benefits decades into the future.
• Organizational and Workplace Safety: Evaluating managerial foresight, strategic risk management, employee adherence to occupational safety protocols, and organizational citizenship behaviors.

Furthermore, the purpose of modern cross-cultural validations, such as the adaptation of the instrument for young adults in developing and non-Western societies (e.g., Malaysia), is to liberate temporal cognition theory from the methodological constraints of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) samples. Cultural frameworks profoundly shape societal perceptions of time, fate, and economic security. Validating the CFC scale across diverse geopolitical landscapes equips researchers with an invariant, standardized measurement architecture that illuminates how industrialization, cultural values, and macroeconomic uncertainty modulate temporal choice.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct underlying the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale captures an individual’s characteristic cognitive orientation toward the temporal horizon when making behavioral decisions. At its core, the construct addresses the psychological weight assigned to outcomes distributed across time. In classical decision theory, this phenomenon is intimately connected to temporal discounting—the mathematical rate at which the subjective value of a reward declines as the delay to its receipt increases. However, unlike behavioral economic discount tasks that rely on hypothetical monetary trade-offs (e.g., choosing between $50 today or$100 in one year), the CFC construct reflects a broad, stable personality trait and cognitive schemata that permeates diverse real-life decision-making domains.

Historically, Strathman et al. (1994) conceptualized CFC as a unidimensional construct along a single bipolar continuum. At the high end of this continuum were future-oriented individuals who routinely anticipated the long-term ramifications of their choices, formulated distant life goals, and willingly sustained proximal discomfort, exertion, or boredom to maximize future utility. At the low end were present-oriented individuals who evaluated actions almost entirely based on their immediate consequences, ease of execution, and immediate emotional or hedonic payoff, operating under the assumption that the distant future is either unpredictable or capable of taking care of itself.

However, extensive subsequent psychometric and neurocognitive research demonstrated that the human mind does not treat immediate gratification and future foresight as mutually exclusive endpoints of a single continuum. Instead, modern psychometrics conceptualizes the CFC construct within a bi-dimensional framework, formalized into two distinct yet interrelated latent dimensions:

1. CFC-Immediate

The CFC-Immediate subscale captures the extent to which an individual’s decision-making is governed by immediate outcomes, instant gratification, personal convenience, and short-term problem resolution. Individuals scoring high on CFC-Immediate display pronounced temporal myopia. Their behavioral choices are dictated by proximal hedonic valence—avoiding immediate effort, pain, or frustration while pursuing rapid sensory, social, or emotional rewards. For example, an individual high in CFC-Immediate may acknowledge that smoking cigarettes or engaging in uncontrolled credit spending carries devastating long-term health or financial consequences, yet the proximal urge for immediate stress relief or instant acquisition completely dominates the decision-making threshold. Importantly, CFC-Immediate is not merely the absence of future thought; it reflects an active, motivated cognitive prioritization of the immediate present.

2. CFC-Future

The CFC-Future subscale quantifies the degree to which an individual actively imagines, values, and prioritizes the distant, prospective consequences of current behaviors. High scorers exhibit superior episodic foresight, self-regulatory capacity, and proactive coping. They consistently monitor how day-to-day actions ripple into the distant future (e.g., years or decades ahead) and take warnings regarding remote crises seriously. A person exhibiting elevated CFC-Future maintains rigorous academic study schedules, adheres to strict nutritional routines, and contributes diligently to retirement savings because the anticipated psychological reward of future stability outshines the immediate discomfort of current effort. The behavioral manifestation of CFC-Future is characterized by perseverance, deliberative planning, and cognitive vigilance.

Recognizing CFC as bi-dimensional allows researchers to identify complex, mixed psychological profiles. For instance, an individual may simultaneously possess high CFC-Future (a clear intellectual concern and genuine anxiety regarding retirement security or long-term health) alongside high CFC-Immediate (a powerful impulsivity that succumbs to instant retail promotions or sedentary entertainment). Treating these dimensions independently resolves long-standing paradoxes in behavioral medicine and consumer economics wherein individuals who express deep concern for the future nevertheless fail to enact protective present behaviors.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale is grounded in a convergence of cognitive, developmental, and social psychological paradigms, drawing primarily upon Intertemporal Choice Theory, Temporal Construal Theory, Dual-Systems Models of Cognition, and Self-Regulation Theory.

Intertemporal Choice and Delay Discounting

The theoretical bedrock of the CFC scale lies in intertemporal choice—decisions where outcomes occur at different points in time. Foundational work in behavioral economics by George Ainslie and developmental psychology by Walter Mischel demonstrated that humans naturally discount delayed rewards hyperbolically. Hyperbolic discounting dictates that an individual dramatically overvalues rewards available in the immediate present relative to those delayed into the future. Strathman and colleagues recognized that while hyperbolic discounting reflects a universal evolutionary heuristic, individual differences in the steepness of the discounting curve constitute a core dimension of personality. The CFC scale was engineered as a psychometric reflection of an individual’s baseline discount rate, translating mathematical delay discounting into cognitive beliefs, introspective appraisals, and everyday behavioral habits.

Temporal Construal Theory

The construct is deeply informed by Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman’s Construal Level Theory (CLT). According to CLT, temporal distance changes how individuals mentally represent events and actions. Distant future events are represented through high-level, abstract, decontextualized, and coherent mental construals focused on primary goals and central values (e.g., health, financial independence, academic excellence). In contrast, immediate events are processed through low-level, concrete, contextualized, and pragmatic construals focused on the immediate feasibility, sensory difficulty, and mechanical convenience of the action (e.g., how cold the gym is, how delicious the cake looks, how tedious the financial ledger feels). Individuals with high CFC-Future have an enhanced cognitive capacity to maintain high-level, abstract goal representations in working memory, allowing those abstract ideals to guide real-time motor and behavioral choices. Conversely, high CFC-Immediate individuals are perpetually driven by concrete, visceral, low-level construals that hijack attention toward immediate sensory realities.

Dual-Systems Cognitive Models

The bi-dimensional evolution of the CFC scale directly mirrors modern neurocognitive Dual-Systems Models (e.g., Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2; Strack and Deutsch’s Reflective-Impulsive Model). System 1 represents an evolutionary ancient, fast, associative, emotionally driven, and impulsive system localized primarily within subcortical and limbic structures (notably the ventral striatum and amygdala). System 2 represents a phylogenetically newer, slow, deliberative, rule-governed, and reflective system supported by the prefrontal cortex (specifically the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate). Within this architecture:

• CFC-Immediate reflects the subjective sensitivity and behavioral reactivity of the impulsive, limbic System 1, which registers proximal rewards with high emotional valence and demands immediate gratification.
• CFC-Future represents the functional activation of the reflective prefrontal System 2, executing cognitive simulation, prospective mental time travel (chronesthesia), and top-down inhibitory control over primal impulses.

Self-Regulation and Ego Depletion Models

Finally, the scale integrates Roy Baumeister’s Strength Model of Self-Control. Exercising self-control requires an individual to expend executive resources to override dominant, automatic impulses. Research by Joireman et al. (2008) verified that when individuals experience ego depletion (the temporary exhaustion of self-regulatory strength), their choices regress toward immediate gratification. However, individuals endowed with high baseline trait CFC-Future exhibit greater resilience against depletion-induced lapses, because their underlying cognitive architecture instinctively assigns high intrinsic utility to future-aligned goals, lowering the subjective effort required for executive inhibition.

7. Validity

The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale has undergone extensive empirical vetting across psychometric domains, consistently fulfilling the rigorous standards of construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Content and Face Validity

In standard validation protocols, content validity is established through panel reviews of expert psychometricians, behavioral economists, and developmental psychologists. In the 2021 adaptation by She, Ma, and Khoshnavay Fomani, content validity was formally quantified using the Content Validity Ratio (CVR; Lawshe, 1975) and modified kappa coefficients (κ*). Expert review panels evaluated item pools for conceptual clarity, semantic fidelity, and cultural relevance. Items failing to achieve critical thresholds were eliminated or refined, ensuring that the instrument’s manifest variables comprehensively and exclusively reflected the theoretical domains of temporal trade-offs without introduce extraneous linguistic or cultural noise.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity evaluates how effectively the operationalized scale aligns with theoretical expectations. In confirmatory structural models, convergent validity is demonstrated when the scale’s items load heavily and significantly onto their designated latent factors. In the empirical validation of the refined 10-item Malaysian version (She et al., 2021):

• All standardized factor loadings on both CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future exceeded the conventional 0.60 cutoff, with many loading above 0.75 and 0.85 (p < 0.001).
• The Composite Reliability (CR) for both factors comfortably exceeded the established 0.70 benchmark (CR = 0.887 for CFC-Immediate; CR = 0.867 for CFC-Future).
• The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) surpassed the conservative 0.50 threshold established by Fornell and Larcker (1981), demonstrating that the latent constructs account for the majority of variance observed in their respective manifest indicators rather than error variance.

Discriminant Validity

Establishing discriminant validity is crucial for confirming that CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future represent distinct psychological dimensions rather than polar opposites or collinear artifacts. Researchers utilize two primary psychometric metrics:

1. The Fornell-Larcker Criterion: The square root of the AVE for both CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future was proven to be markedly higher than the inter-factor correlation between the two latent dimensions, confirming that each latent construct shares more variance with its assigned indicators than with the other construct.
2. Heterotrait-Monotrait Ratio of Correlations (HTMT): As modern psychometricians have noted, the Fornell-Larcker criterion can be insufficiently sensitive in certain structural modeling contexts. In modern validations, the HTMT ratio is utilized as the gold standard. Across multiple studies, HTMT values between CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future remain strictly below the stringent conservative threshold of 0.85, providing definitive mathematical proof of structural independence and discriminant validity.

Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity

The predictive power of the CFC scale has been confirmed through hundreds of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental studies worldwide:

• Health Behaviors: A comprehensive meta-analysis by Murphy and Dockray (2018) involving over 70 independent studies demonstrated that higher scores on future-oriented temporal measures significantly predicted engagement in physical exercise (r ≈ 0.23), healthy dietary adherence (r ≈ 0.21), regular cancer screenings (OR = 1.45), and reduced tobacco and alcohol consumption.
• Financial and Consumer Behavior: High CFC-Immediate scores reliably predict compulsive buying behavior, online shopping addiction, credit card debt accumulation, and susceptibility to deceptive financial scams (Pahlevan Sharif et al., 2018, 2021). Conversely, CFC-Future strongly predicts monthly personal retirement savings, asset accumulation, and financial self-efficacy.
• Environmental Conservation: Multiple structural equation models (e.g., Corral-Verdugo et al., 2017; Suárez et al., 2020) show that CFC-Future is a decisive direct predictor of pro-environmental beliefs, waste reduction, water conservation, and support for carbon-tax policies, while CFC-Immediate is linked to consumer materialism and excessive energy consumption.

8. Reliability

Internal consistency and measurement precision across independent samples and across time are critical hallmarks of psychometric viability. The Consideration of Future Consequences Scale has consistently established exceptional reliability metrics across its structural evolutions.

Internal Consistency Metrics

Historically, psychometric investigations reported internal consistency exclusively via Cronbach’s alpha (α). Early evaluations of the original 12-item unidimensional scale by Strathman et al. (1994) reported alpha coefficients consistently hovering between 0.80 and 0.86 across multiple undergraduate samples. However, Cronbach’s alpha operates under the restrictive assumption of tau-equivalence (equal factor loadings across all items) and can severely underestimate or overestimate scale reliability when applied to multi-item latent models with variable loadings.

To overcome these mathematical limitations, contemporary psychometric analyses emphasize McDonald’s omega (ω), Composite Reliability (CR), and Maximal Reliability (MaxR). In the empirical psychometric scorecard established by She, Ma, and Khoshnavay Fomani (2021) using a multi-region sample of young adults (N = 529):

• CFC-Immediate Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.901; McDonald’s ω = 0.901; Composite Reliability = 0.887.
• CFC-Future Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.867; McDonald’s ω = 0.868; Composite Reliability = 0.867.
• Overall Measurement Model: Composite internal consistency metrics for the total instrument yielded an α of 0.87 and an ω of 0.87.

These values demonstrate that both subscales possess exceptional internal consistency, comfortably exceeding the standard benchmark of 0.70 recommended for general research instruments and the 0.80 standard recommended for high-stakes individual assessment.

Test-Retest Stability

Because temporal consideration is conceptualized as a stable personality trait rather than a fluctuating emotional state, temporal stability across longitudinal intervals is vital. Strathman et al. (1994) established test-retest reliability across a two-week interval at r = 0.76 (p < 0.001). Subsequent long-term stability investigations (e.g., Toepoel, 2010) administered the instrument across intervals spanning six months and one year, demonstrating test-retest coefficients between r = 0.71 and r = 0.74. These results confirm that while consideration of future consequences can undergo subtle development across the lifespan or shift under powerful cognitive interventions, it maintains high temporal stability over extended periods.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural evolution of the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale is one of the most thoroughly documented debates in modern psychometrics. The instrument transitioned from an initial single-factor model to a widely replicated bi-dimensional framework, with recent cross-cultural adaptations introducing refined short-form structures.

The Historical Unidimensional vs. Bi-Dimensional Debate

When Strathman et al. (1994) originally engineered the 12-item CFC instrument, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) suggested a single dominant general factor. Items indicating a present focus were reverse-scored and added to future-oriented items. However, methodologists soon demonstrated that the apparent unidimensionality was an artifact of item wording polarity: all future-oriented items were positively worded, while all present-oriented items were negatively worded. Methodological studies by Petrocelli (2003), Joireman et al. (2008), and Hevey et al. (2010) demonstrated via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) that a two-factor model (Immediate vs. Future) provided a vastly superior fit compared to the single-factor specification.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) Methodology and Results

In rigorous validation studies (e.g., She et al., 2021), researchers adopt a split-sample cross-validation design. The total sample is randomly divided into two equal halves. On the first calibration sample, an EFA is conducted using Principal Axis Factoring or Maximum Likelihood extraction combined with an oblique rotation method (such as Promax or Direct Oblimin). Oblique rotation is methodologically mandatory because psychological sub-dimensions representing temporal cognition are theoretically expected to correlate.

The sample adequacy for factor extraction is routinely established via the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure (consistently yielding values > 0.85, well above the 0.60 threshold) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (p < 0.001), indicating substantial patterned correlation across items. Cattell’s scree test, parallel analysis, and eigenvalues greater than 1.0 reliably extract two robust latent factors:

• Factor 1 (CFC-Immediate): Captures items tapping into present-day convenience, immediate outcomes, and disregard of distant warnings.
• Factor 2 (CFC-Future): Captures items assessing personal sacrifice, long-term goal pursuit, and prospective planning.
• In the refined 10-item Malaysian adaptation, these two factors successfully accounted for 61.68% of the total cumulative variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Goodness-of-Fit Indices

To confirm the structural stability identified in the exploratory phase, a CFA is conducted on the second, independent validation half of the dataset using Structural Equation Modeling software (e.g., AMOS, Mplus, or lavaan in R). Modern CFA protocols assess model adequacy using multiple global fit indices:

• Chi-Square to Degrees of Freedom Ratio (χ²/df): Ratios between 1.0 and 3.0 denote excellent fit. In the She et al. (2021) 10-item model, χ²/df fell comfortably within the desirable range (< 2.5).
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Established criteria designate values > 0.90 as acceptable, and > 0.95 as indicative of superior fit. The refined bi-dimensional model consistently yields CFI and TLI values > 0.94.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Values below 0.06 indicate excellent model fit, while values up to 0.08 represent acceptable error. The bi-dimensional CFA yields an RMSEA ≤ 0.055 with a 90% confidence interval confirming close fit (PCLOSE > 0.05).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Values remain strictly below the recommended 0.08 threshold (typically ≤ 0.045).

Standardized item factor loadings across the final latent model range between 0.65 and 0.89. Comparative model testing demonstrates that competing models—including a single-factor unidimensional model and an orthogonal (uncorrelated) two-factor model—exhibit severe structural degradation and unacceptable fit statistics (e.g., CFI < 0.75, RMSEA > 0.12), firmly cementing the oblique bi-dimensional structure as the psychometrically defensible representation of the scale.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The standard psychometric specifications of the Consideration of Future Consequences assessment tool are detailed below:

• Test Type: Psychometric self-report rating scale / behavioral assessment inventory.
• Scale Format: 10 to 14 standardized declarative statements (original classic version comprises 12 items; contemporary adaptations frequently employ refined 10-item or 14-item bi-dimensional variants).
• Response Scale: 10 items, Likert-type response format.
• Subscale Structure: Multidimensional architecture comprising two distinct latent subscales:
  • CFC-Immediate Subscale: Quantifies an individual’s preference for short-term satisfaction, ease, and immediate outcome prioritization.
  • CFC-Future Subscale: Quantifies the deliberate consideration and prioritization of distant, long-term implications of current actions.
• Administration Mode: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computerized digital survey (individual or group testing environments).
• Target Population: General adult population, university students, and working young adults (validated extensively for ages 18–65; targeted adaptation for young adults aged 25–40).
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Scoring Instructions:
  • Subscale Scoring (Standard Contemporary Protocol): Responses are computed separately for the two subscales. The CFC-Future score is calculated by computing the mean or sum of all future-oriented items (Items 1, 2, 6, 7, 8). The CFC-Immediate score is calculated by computing the mean or sum of all immediate-oriented items (Items 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12). Calculating separate subscale means preserves the unique predictive power of each dimension.
  • Unidimensional Composite Scoring (Historical Protocol): In studies adhering strictly to the original Strathman unidimensional framework, Items 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12 are reverse-scored (e.g., on a 5-point scale: 1 → 5, 2 → 4, 3 → 3, 4 → 2, 5 → 1). Following reverse coding, all items are summed or averaged into a single global score, where higher scores represent higher overall future orientation.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original Consideration of Future Consequences Scale was published in 1994 by Alan Strathman, Faith Gleicher, David S. Boninger, and C. Scott Edwards in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The expanded CFC-14 bi-dimensional refinement was introduced in 2012 by Jeff Joireman and colleagues. The cross-cultural young adult adaptation and psychometric scorecard referenced herein was validated in 2021 by Long She, Lan Ma, and Fatemeh Khoshnavay Fomani.

Licensing and Research Permissions: The scale was established as an academic psychometric instrument intended for scientific investigation. For non-commercial academic, psychological, and clinical research, the instrument may be utilized without licensing fees, provided formal attribution and scholarly citation are given to the original authors. When executing formal cross-cultural translation, adaptation, or institutional modification, standard psychometric etiquette requires obtaining written academic clearance from the copyright holders or primary test developers (e.g., Professor Alan Strathman, University of Missouri). For the 2021 Malaysian adaptation, formal written permission was obtained directly from Professor Strathman via academic correspondence prior to data collection.

12. References

The following references represent foundational psychometric, theoretical, and empirical literature regarding the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale:

• Acuña, I., Celis, S., & Minaya, C. (2020). Argentine validation of the consideration of future consequences scale (CFC-14). Acta Colombiana de Psicología, 23(1), 346–358. https://doi.org/10.14718/ACP.2020.23.1.16
• Ainin, S., Salleh, A. H. M., & Bahri, S. (2015). Consideration of future consequences among managers in Iran and Malaysia. Futures, 71, 29–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.06.003
• Corral-Verdugo, V., Fraijo-Sing, B., & Tapia-Fonllem, C. (2017). Consideration of immediate and future consequences in accepting and responding to anthropogenic climate change. Psychology, 8(10), 1519–1532. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2017.810101
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/3151312
• Henseler, J., Ringle, C. M., & Sarstedt, M. (2015). A new criterion for assessing discriminant validity in variance-based structural equation modeling. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-014-0403-8
• Hevey, D., Pertl, M., Thomas, K., Maher, L., Craig, A., & Ni Chuinneagain, S. (2010). Consideration of future consequences scale: Confirmatory factor analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(5), 654–657. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.01.006
• Joireman, J., Balliet, D., Sprott, D., Spangenberg, E., & Schultz, J. (2008). Consideration of future consequences, ego-depletion, and self-control: Support for distinguishing between CFC-immediate and CFC-future sub-scales. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(1), 15–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.02.011
• Joireman, J., Shaffer, M. J., Balliet, D., & Strathman, A. (2012). Promotion orientation explains why future-oriented people exercise and eat healthy: Evidence from the two-factor consideration of future consequences-14 scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(10), 1272–1287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167212449362
• Murphy, L., & Dockray, S. (2018). The consideration of future consequences and health behaviour: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology Review, 12(4), 357–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2018.1489298
• Pahlevan Sharif, S., Ahadzadeh, A. S., & Ong, F. S. (2018). Excessive social networking sites use and online compulsive buying in young adults: The mediating role of money attitude. Young Consumers, 19(3), 310–327. https://doi.org/10.1108/YC-10-2017-00743
• Petrocelli, J. V. (2003). Factor validation of the Consideration of Future Consequences Scale: Evidence for a short version. The Journal of Social Psychology, 143(4), 405–413. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224540309598453
• She, L., Ma, L., & Khoshnavay Fomani, F. (2021). Consideration of Future Consequences Scale: Psychometric evaluation among Malaysian young adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 770609. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.770609
• Strathman, A., Gleicher, F., Boninger, D. S., & Edwards, C. S. (1994). The consideration of future consequences: Weighing immediate and distant outcomes of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66(4), 742–752. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.66.4.742
• Vásquez-Echeverría, A., Álvarez-Núñez, L., & Cruz, J. (2018). Evidence for the reliability and factor solution of the CFCS-14 in Spanish: A multi-method validation in Spain and Uruguay. Personality and Individual Differences, 123, 171–176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.11.021

13. Items of the Scale