Relationship between Future Time Perspectives guided future imagery and depressive tendency

Abstract

Two future time perspectives are commonly known: the expansive and limited future time perspectives, in which a person views the future as long and wide, and short and limited, respectively. This study examined the relationship between future time perspective and depressive tendencies. In the first part, 163 undergraduate students imagined the short- earlier than the long-term future and 191 undergraduate students imagined the long- earlier than the short-term future. The results showed that depressive tendencies reduced the degree of the expansive future time perspective, and an order effect was observed for each depressive level. In the second part, whether attentional biases could be observed under two future time perspective conditions by controlling depressive tendencies was investigated. In total, high and low depressive groups comprising 15 college students each were instructed to generate mental imagery about their short- and long-term futures. A significant difference in response times to negative stimuli as an attentional bias was observed between groups under the expansive future time perspective condition and within the high depressive group under the two future time perspective conditions.