Time Orientation And Health Flashcards
What is time orientation?
The tendency to be motivated by one temporal frame over others when making decisions (past, present and future)
Zimbardo and Boyd (1999)
If you favour one temporal frame over another when making decisions, the preferred temporal frame serves as a cognitive temporal bias that, with chronic use over time, becomes a trait-like tendency motivating behaviour
The self over time
William James
Different self everyday
Ability to perceive an unbrokenness in the stream of selves despite the temporal positioning of the self
Self-Continuity
Integration of these temporally partitioned selves
Why is time orientation important for health?
Physical inactivity and unhealthy diet are major contributors to the obesity epidemic worldwide
Obesity is a precursor to many chronic diseases
Time orientation is primarily linked to health via its associations with what types of health behaviours?
Preventative health behaviours
Health-promoting behaviours
Health risky behaviours
Preventative health behaviours examples
Cancer and diabetes screening
Suncream use
Health-promoting behaviours examples
Healthy eating
Exercise
Stress management
Health risky behaviours examples
Smoking
Alcohol use
Substance abuse
Preventative health behaviours are a ____ time-orientation
Future
Health promoting behaviours are a ____ time-orientation
Future
Health risky behaviours are a ____ and _____ time-orientation
Past
Present
What does CFC stand for?
Consideration of future consequences
Orbell & Haggar (2006) temporal message framing for type 2 diabetes screening
210 adults
High-CFC individuals were expected to be more sensitive to distant consequences that are both positive and negative
Low-CFC individuals were expected to be more sensitive to immediate consequences that are both positive and negative
Different attitudes in Orbell and Haggar (2006)
Short term negative = have to undergo unpleasant and inconvenient procedures immediately
Long term positive = peace of mind about their health for years to come
Short term positive = immediate peace of mind about their health
Long term negative = worry about their condition and have to change their lifestyle for the rest of their life
Orbell & Haggar (2006) temporal message framing for type 2 diabetes screening - results
Low-CFC individuals were more persuaded when positive consequences were short term and negative consequences were long term
High-CFC individuals were more persuaded when positive consequences were long term and negative consequences were short term
What is procrastination?
Common self-regulatory problem involving the unnecessary and voluntary delay of important intended tasks despite the recognition that this delay may have negative consequences
Procrastination occurs for tasks that are…
Boring
Frustrating
Lacking meaning and/or structure
What does emotional distress make chronic procrastinators do?
Regulating immediate mood is prioritised over taking instrumental action towards achieving goals
Procrastination and the temporally extended self
Past self makes intention to act but does not
Onus is on future self to do so
Future self becomes present self
Present self has to deal with unfinished task
Believes future self can take care of it and so puts it off and off
Sirois (2014) correlation of future self and procrastination
Correlation of future time perspective and trait (chronic) procrastination -.45
Not totally present focussed just not future focused
Future self-continuity
The idea that we feel close to our future self
Measured on venn diagrams
Sirois (2014) perceptions of future self study 1
Community adults
Correlation of -.24 between procrastination and closeness to future self
High procrastinators don’t feel close to their future self
Sirois (2014) perceptions of future self study 2
Online survey
General procrastination scale (Lay, 1986)
Wellness behaviours inventory (Sirois, 2003)
Looked at different time scales, week, month, year
Trait procrastination was related to health promoting behaviours
Explained in part by their feelings of emotional closeness towards their future self
Stress orientation hypothesis
Stress-initiated cognitive shifts orient focus away from distal and towards more immediate concerns
Activation of brain areas involved in threat detection (amygdala)
Narrows our time-orientation to focus on the stressor, harder to think about the future
Procrastination is linked to
Delays in making medical appointments
Practicing fewer health promoting and protective behaviours
Higher stress
Greater number of health problems
Sirois et al (2003) procrastination health model
Wellness behaviours didn’t explain the link between procrastination and illness
Partly explained by treatment delay and stress
Factors for chronic illness…
Genetics
Environmental/social
Behavioural
Wilson and Ross (2001) temporal self-appraisal theory
Tendency to derogate distant past selves and praise recent past selves
Students that were prompted to view their beginning of term past self as further in the past rated them more negatively that those prompted to view them as closer
Psychological distance = ?
Perceived distance
Peetz & Wilson (2012) - temporal landmarks
Temporally extended selves are perceived as more distant and dissimilar from current self when an intervening landmark event has been made salient
Hall, Fong and Sansone (2015) hypothesis
Future orientation would predict greater health behaviours and effects would be stronger for males than females (study 1)
Those with more future oriented perspective would have lower BMI, explained by diet and exercise
Hall, Fong and Sansone (2015) results
People with more future-oriented time perspective engaged in healthy behavioural practices
These practices explained in part the lower BMI of future oriented individuals
Orbell & Haggar (2006) novel finding
Framing health behaviour messages in terms of short-term benefits may be effective in motivating health behaviour change in present-oriented individuals because it fosters a positive attitude towards the behaviour
How is procrastination linked to physical health?
Direct stress pathway
Indirect treatment delay pathway
How is time-orientation implicated in the health outcomes associated with procrastination?
Procrastination is associated with short-term mood regulation over long-term consequences
Procrastinators more susceptible to giving in to unhealthy temptations that interfere with health promoting behaviours
Stress created by this can also have negative health consequences
Chronic illness provides a context of ____ and ____ to the _____
Continuity
Challenge
Self-system
Sirois & Hirsch (2013) sample
Prospective online study with 6-month follow up
Sample 1 - 420 people with IBD (follow up = 152)
Sample 2 - 423 people with any type of arthritis (follow up = 168)
Sirois & Hirsch (2013) methods
Recent condition = asked to think about a point in the recent past, 6 months ago when they completed the first study
Distant condition = asked to think ALL THE WAY BACK to 6 months ago, what were they like WAY BACK THEN
Asked to judge how far away when they completed the first survey felt and asked if anything big had happened in that time (temporal landmark)
Sirois & Hirsch (2013) results
No significant difference between the recent and distant conditions and how far away they felt
Temporal distance theory doesn’t hold in terms of chronic illness
Significant difference between how far they felt from their past self if they had a temporal landmark or not
Presence of a landmark made them feel like the past self was further away
Jylha (2009) factors that contribute to how people rate their current health
What we mean by health
Past health
Mental state
Cultural perceptions of health
Self-rated health and personality
Two samples of arthritis and IBD sufferers
Controlled for education, age, current health and fatigue
Fatigue explained 11% and 17% of future health
Agreeableness and neuroticism explained additional variance (4%)
Optimism levels explained why A & N were linked to future self-rated health
Hall et al (2012) type II diabetes management and time-perspective - what they wanted to examine
Examined the role of behavioural intentions in explaining the link between time-perspective and two weight-management behaviours in individuals newly diagnosed with diabetes
Hall et al (2012) type II diabetes management and time-perspective results
Physical activity - positive relationship between future-time orientation and physical activity (mediated by intention)
Dietary choices - negative relationship between future-time perspective and fatty food consumption (mediated by intentions)
Future orientation is associated with better health behaviours
Is procrastination a vulnerability factor for hypertension and cardiovascular disease?
Both stress and poor health behaviours are implicated in the development and exacerbation of a number of major chronic illnesses
Procrastination associated with low conscientiousness and agreeableness, both of which linked to poor CV health
Poor coping may increase vulnerability in individuals with HT/CVD
Sirois (2015) procrastination health model
Trait procrastination scores predicted being in the CVD/HT group
Ppts with HT/CVD had a stronger association with maladaptive coping behaviours than healthy controls
Ppts with HT/CVD had significantly larger indirect effects on stress through maladaptive coping than healthy controls
