Thinking about the past and future in daily life: an experience sampling study of individual differences in mental time travel

Abstract

Remembering the past and imagining the future are hallmarks of mental time travel. We provide evidence that such experiences are influenced by individual differences in temporal and affective biases in cognitive style, particularly brooding rumination (a negative past-oriented bias) and optimism (a positive future-oriented bias). Participants completed a 7-day, cellphone-based experience-sampling study of temporal orientation and mental imagery. Multilevel models showed that individual differences in brooding rumination predicted less vivid and positive past- and future-oriented thoughts, even after controlling for depressed mood. People high in brooding rumination were also more likely to report thinking about a past experience when probed at random during the day. Conversely, optimists were more likely to report more vivid and positive future-oriented, but not past-oriented thoughts, although they did not report thinking more or less often about the past and future. The results suggest that temporal and affective biases in cognitive style influence how people think about the past and future in daily life.

Figure 1

The Probability of Thinking About the Past as a Function of Brooding Note. n = 79. The brooding variable on the x-axis was derived from summing and z-transforming the five items of the brooding subscale. The full model included brooding, self-reflection, and depression, so the above graph represents the probability of thinking about the past as a function of brooding, adjusted for levels of self-reflection and depressed mood. Z-transformed observed variables were used instead of latent variables for the sake of illustration.