Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel

Time is among the most important yet mysterious aspects of experience. We investigated everyday mental time travel, especially into the future. Two community samples, contacted at random points for 3 (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2020-12, Vol.46 (12), p.1631-1648
Main Authors: Baumeister, Roy F., Hofmann, Wilhelm, Summerville, Amy, Reiss, Philip T., Vohs, Kathleen D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ecological momentary assessment
Goal setting
Involuntary
Subjective experiences
Time
Time travel
Travel
Unpleasant
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Time is among the most important yet mysterious aspects of experience. We investigated everyday mental time travel, especially into the future. Two community samples, contacted at random points for 3 (Study 1; 6,686 reports) and 14 days (Study 2; 2,361 reports), reported on their most recent thought. Both studies found that thoughts about the present were frequent, thoughts about the future also were common, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were on average highly happy and pleasant but low in meaningfulness. Pragmatic prospection (thoughts preparing for action) was evident in thoughts about planning and goals. Thoughts with no time aspect were lower in sociality and experiential richness. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of thinking about past and future often were similar—while both differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/0146167220908411