Future Time Perspective and Real-Life Utterances About the Future in Young and Older Adults

Future time perspective (FTP) refers to an individual's global perception of the future. It has been found to be positively related to life satisfaction. FTP is traditionally assessed via self-report, but recently a few studies have used observable behaviors for assessing FTP. We focused on two real-life behaviors (frequency and qualities of talking about the personal future) and explored whether they could be used as behavior-based measures of FTP. We examined the association between these behaviors and self-reported FTP, and their relationships with life satisfaction. The sample included 55 young (aged 18-31) and 47 older adults (aged 62-83) who completed questionnaires on future time perspective and life satisfaction. Over 4 days, participants carried an electronically activated recorder, which randomly captured 30-second sound snippets from their daily lives - a total of 30,656 sound snippets were collected. Participants' utterances were coded for temporal orientation. Linguistic inquiry word count was used to analyze the qualities of future-oriented utterances. Structural equation models showed that self-reported FTP was not associated with the two real-life behaviors. It was positively associated with life satisfaction for the whole sample. The frequency of future-oriented utterances and family-related words were positively related to young adults' life satisfaction. Achievement-related words were positively related to older adults' life satisfaction.