Time Perspective and Self-Esteem: Negative Temporality Affects the Way We Judge Ourselves

Time Perspective is the process by which people categorize, archive and recover personal and social experiences through temporal frames (past, present, and future), influencing various aspects of human behaviour and cognition. It was proposed that it is related to selfesteem, though until now the main approach when exploring this relation was correlational. In this study, we explore a structural equation model of Time Perspective’s association with Self-Esteem. The sample was composed of 474 undergraduate students with a mean age of 19 years. The final model presented a high predictive power of Self-Esteem (R2 =.39, p < .001) and good fit indices (x2/df = 2.1, CFI = .94, GFI = .91, RMSEA = .05) with two temporal dimensions entering the model: Past Negative (βSelf-Esteem.PastNegative = -.52, p < .001) and Future-Negative (βSelf-Esteem.FutureNegative = -.17, p < .001) showing that negative affects of time dimensions (rather than positive ones) are more related to Self-Esteem. Results are discussed in relation to Self-Esteem and TP literature.