Novel coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) is spreading across the world, threatening not only physical health but also psychological well‐being. We reasoned that a broadened temporal perspective may attenuate current mental distress and tested a letter‐writing manipulation designed to connect people to their post‐COVID‐19 future selves. We conducted an online experiment with 738 Japanese participants recruited from two common survey platforms. They were randomly assigned to either send a letter to their future self (letter‐to‐future) condition, send a letter to present self from the perspective of future self (letter‐from‐future) condition, or a control condition. Participants in both letter‐writing conditions showed immediate decrease in negative affect and increase in positive affect relative to the control condition. These effects were mediated by temporal distancing from the current situation. These findings suggest that taking a broader temporal perspective can be achieved by letter writing with a future self and may offer an effective means of regulating negative affect in a stressful present time such as the COVID‐19 pandemic.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 大流行期间的时间距离：用未来的自我写信可以减轻负面影响

新型冠状病毒病 (COVID-19) 正在全球蔓延，不仅威胁身体健康，还威胁心理健康。我们推断，拓宽的时间视角可能会减轻当前的精神困扰，并测试了一种旨在将人们与 COVID-19 后的未来自我联系起来的写信操作。我们对从两个常见调查平台招募的 738 名日本参与者进行了在线实验。他们被随机分配到要么给未来的自己写信（信给未来）的情况，要么从未来的自己的角度给现在的自己写信（信给未来）) 条件或控制条件。相对于控制条件，两种写信条件下的参与者都表现出消极情绪立即减少，积极情绪增加。这些影响是通过与当前情况的时间距离来调节的。这些发现表明，通过与未来的自己写信可以实现更广泛的时间视角，并可能提供一种有效的手段来调节当前压力大的负面影响，例如 COVID-19 大流行。