Everyday Thoughts in Time: Experience Sampling Studies of Mental Time Travel
PsyArXiv October 2, 2018 preprint DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/3cwre (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experience sampling study |
|---|---|
| Population | Two community samples of adults reporting on their most recent thoughts at random moments |
| Duration | Study 1: three days of random reports; Study 2: 14 days of random reports |
| Key points | Thoughts about the present and future were frequent, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Present thoughts were common during social interaction, felt pleasant, but lacked meaningfulness; future thoughts usually involved planning and goal desires; past thoughts were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. The authors argue that the similarity of past and future thought supports the view that memory and prospection use similar mental structures. |
Abstract
Time is an important yet mysterious aspects of human conscious experience. We investigated time in everyday thoughts. Two community samples, contacted at random points for three (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 and future were frequent, whereas thoughts about the past were rare. Thoughts about the present were common during social interaction, felt pleasant, but lacked to meaningfulness. Thoughts about the future included desires to satisfy goals and usually involved planning. Thoughts about the past were relatively unpleasant and involuntary. Subjective experiences of past and future thoughts often were similar and differed from present focus, consistent with views that memory and prospection use similar mental structures. Taken together, the present work provides unique insights into the conscious experience of time highlights the pragmatic utility of future thought.