The influence of time perspective on the memory of temporal information: An empirical study from the perspectives of the past and the future

Individual differences in time perspective are predictive of many behavioral and psychological variables. However, the empirical relationship between time perspective and temporal information processing is unclear. The current study investigated the effects of past and future time perspective on temporal self-evaluation and memory for both self-related and non-self-related temporal information. The sample included two groups of participants with a high past time perspective and a high future time perspective. They studied trait adjectives in a temporal self-reference condition (In Experiment 1, i.e., they rated whether each word described their past or future self) and a temporal-reference condition (In Experiment 2, they rated whether each word described the past or the future). The results showed that time perspective does not affect temporal self-evaluation. However, it does have a significant impact on memory for temporal information. People with a higher past time perspective showed better memory for past-related information, and people with a higher future time perspective showed a significant memory advantage for future-related information. Our findings suggest that time perspective enhances memory for temporal information that aligns with the temporal dimension of an individual's time perspective. These findings provide new insights into cognitive functioning in the context of time perspective theory.