Time will tell: Time perspective as a source for metacognitive emotion-focused coping and its measurement

• Published in: Personality and individual differences Vol. 168; p. 110367
• Main Authors: Morgenroth, Olaf, Keck, Michael, Gensicke, Marvin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2021; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Cognitive strategies; Confirmatory factor analysis; Coping; Discriminant validity; Emotion-regulation; Emotional regulation; Individual differences; Measurement; Mental health; Metacognition; Psychological distance; Time perspective; Well being; Psychological distance; Emotion-regulation; Coping; Time perspective; Metacognition
• ISSN: 0191-8869
• DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110367

Mental time travel and time perspective provide the opportunity to shift the experiential perspective, stimulating metacognitive skills for emotion-focused coping. Main objectives of the present studies were a) to construe a rationale for metacognitive temporal coping and b) to develop and validate an instrument to assess individual differences. N = 1283 German subjects (Mage = 33.9, SD = 15.5; 65.9% female) participated in the studies. Study 1 describes the development of a new instrument to assess individual differences in metacognitive temporal coping. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed that impermanence focus, present centeredness, positive temporal refocusing, and negative temporal contrasting can be determined as four metacognitive strategies with internal consistencies ranging from 0.83 to 0.72. Study 2a established convergent and discriminant validity with regard to time perspective, generalized beliefs, emotion-regulation, and other metacognitive skills. Study 2b showed that metacognitive temporal coping predicted aspects of concurrent well-being. More rigorous research designs and longitudinal data would allow to further investigate the contribution of metacognitive temporal coping to well-being and mental health in the future. •Time perspective and mental time travel stimulate metacognitive temporal coping.•Four metacognitive temporal strategies can be distinguished.•The MTCQ provides a reliable, valid instrument to assess individual differences.•Metacognitive temporal coping predicts concurrent well-being.