Abstract

People transcend the present through retrospection and prospection. These forms of mental time travel entail different psychological processes and outcomes. Three axiomatic differences between the past and the future characterize the psychology of mental time travel: (1) time has an apparent direction from the past to the future (Direction); (2) people are more uncertain about the future than the past (Uncertainty); and (3) people have more control over the future than the past (Control). These axiomatic differences orient people towards the future, in service of functional strategies for attention allocation. In a large, diverse sample in the United States, most people attended more to the future than the past, represented the future as closer than the past, and reported stronger emotional reactions to the future than the past. These asymmetries contribute to a tendency for those who attend more to the future versus the past to experience greater subjective well-being.