| 1. |
- Drejing, Karl, et al.
(författare)
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Time Focused Incitements: Re-examining Previous Findings with Ecologically Valid Data
- 2016
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Ingår i: 3rd International Conference on Time Perspective, Copenhagen, Denmark..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Many theories try to explain our perceptions and evaluations of life events in different temporal dimensions. Previous experiments have discovered a temporal asymmetry that suggests that the valence of imagined future events is more intense than if the same event was imagined to occur in the past. However, most research has focused on fictitious events that may be influenced by selection biases from researchers conducting the experiments. Our aim is to investigate if these previous findings are replicable using a large corpus with news articles from Reuters. This dataset presents a type of communication of events that is part of most of peoples’ lives, thus, allowing an ecological validation of past findings. Method: We used 10,000 articles from about one thousand journalists who wrote news stories during 1997. As time markers we selected 10 solid verb conjugations (past and present tense) and 2 auxiliary verbs (future tense), and secondly 5 specific years: 1995-1996 (past), 1997 (present), and 1998-1999 (future). The valence of contexts in the articles was extrapolated by sentiment analysis. Results: Verbs as the time markers generated 20,225 contexts, while years generated 16,396 contexts. An ANOVA found an effect of verb groups (past tense, present tense and future tense) on the contexts’ valence (F = 828.51, df = 2; 20219, p < 0.001). A two-tailed independent sample t-test found a significant difference between past and present (t(9225) = -11.91, p < 0.001) and between present and future (t(14004) = -17.86, p < 0.001). An ANOVA reveled an effect of year groups (1995-1996, 1997, and 1998-1999) on valence (F = 114.22, df = 5; 16390, p < .001). A LSD post-hoc test showed that valence was higher (p < .001) for the 1999-contexts (future) compared to contexts in all the other year groups. Conclusion: Despite of the fact that the data we used here contained a mixture of positive and negative events, our results indicate that future valence > present > past. We argue that these results need to be seen in the light of recent findings using computer simulations, which suggest that individuals who communicate self-beneficial evaluative statements are more likely to survive than individuals not doing so. In addition, humans strive to create legacies for the benefit of future generations. Thus, in real life positive evaluative statements about the future are an incitement to change and to strive forward rather than backward, thus suggesting a time focused incitement to change. In essence we seem to communicate that the past is dark but the future is bright.
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| 2. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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The Outlook on Time Dimensions in Facebook Users’ Status Updates
- 2016
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Ingår i: 3rd International Conference on Time Perspective, Copenhagen, Denmark..
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Humans’ episodic memory system allows the remembrance of past events and the creation of hypothetical (im)probable events. Most, if not all, studies examining how past and future events are valued have been conducted using narrowly defined conditions. For example focusing exclusively on positive or negative fictive events. In reality, however, the way people express their apprehension of past, present, and future events, is a dynamic mixture of positive and negative events and opinions. For instance, people use online social network websites to share memories of past events and predictions and hopes for the future, but also to inform others of what they are currently eating, doing, or thinking (i.e., the present). Earlier research has emphasized that boosting images of self is an effect of the socially competitive nature of Facebook. Furthermore, people see their present self as the final version of themselves (Quidbach et al., 2013). On this basis and in contrast to earlier studies from the laboratory, we propose that in a contemporary natural environment of human communication, such as Facebook, people express higher valence in statuses describing present events compared to statuses describing past and/or future events. Method: The Facebook statuses were gathered from the myPersonality.org project. We investigated the valence of words written in the same context as two specific temporal markers (i.e., years and verbs) by quantifying Facebook users’ status updates using the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm. In short, the average estimated valence was calculated for words in contexts of the 15 words preceding/following each time marker. For years (642 000 statuses) the data were divided into categories relative to 2011, which was the year when the data was collected. For verbs (921 124 statuses) the data was divided in verbs used in the past, present and future tenses. Results: As expected, valence showed a peak in the 2011 contexts compared to those between 2005 and 2015. Nevertheless, while the verbs used in the present tense had higher valence that those used in the past tense, verbs used in the present tense did not differed in valence to verbs used in the future tense.
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| 3. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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The Promotion of a Bright Future and the Prevention of a Dark Future: Time Anchored Incitements in News Articles and Facebook’s Status Updates
- 2018
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 9, s. 1-10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Research suggests that humans have the tendency to increase the valence of events when these are imagined to happen in the future, but to decrease the valence when the same events are imagined to happen in the past. This line of research, however, has mostly been conducted by asking participants to value imagined, yet probable, events. Our aim was to re-examine this time-valence asymmetry using real-life data: a Reuter’s news and a Facebook status updates corpus. Method: We organized the Reuter news (120,000,000 words) and the Facebook status updates data (41,056,346 words) into contexts grouped in chronological order (i.e., past, present, and future) using verbs and years as time markers. These contexts were used to estimate the valence of each article and status update, respectively, in relation to the time markers using natural language processing tools (i.e., the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithm). Results: Our results using verbs, in both text corpus, showed that valence for the future was significantly higher compared to the past (future > past). Similarly, in the Reuter year condition, valence increased approximately linear from 1994 to 1999 for texts written 1996-7. In the Facebook year condition, the valence of the future was also significantly higher than past valence. Conclusion: Generally, the analyses of the Reuters data indicated that the past is devaluated relative to both the present and the future, while the analyses of the Facebook data indicated that both the past and the present are devaluated against the future. On this basis, we suggest that people strive to communicate the promotion of a bright future and the prevention of a dark future, which in turn leads to a temporal-valence asymmetrical phenomenon (valence = past
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