Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends.

Voters evaluate political candidates not only based on their recent record but their history, often faced with weighing the relevance of long-past misdeeds in current appraisal. How should a distant transgression be taken to reflect on the present? Across multiple years, political figures and incidents, we found that people's subjective perceptions of time concerning political candidate's histories can differ radically, regardless of objective fact; political bias shapes people's perception of the time of things past. Results showed that despite equidistant calendar time, people subjectively view a favored politician's successes and opposing politician's failures as much closer in time, while a favored politician's failures and opponent's success seem much further away. Studies 1-3 tested the proposed phenomena across distinct (real and hypothetical) political contexts, while Study 4 tested the causal effects of temporal distance framing. Study 5 provided a final preregistered test of the findings. Overall, we demonstrate that partisans can protect their candidates and attack opponents by shifting their perception of time.

Why bother? Death, failure, and fatalistic withdrawal from life.

The current research examines the conditions under which death contemplation will reduce, rather than increase, goal directed activity. By employing a goal-regulation perspective on the problem of death, we hypothesized that death awareness precipitates withdrawal from the goal for continued life when life is experienced as dissatisfying and hope for the future appears bleak. In Study 1, participants with low life satisfaction who contemplated goal failure responded to mortality salience with reduced desire for continued life. Studies 2-4 examined general goal motivation. Consistent with the idea that withdrawal from life precipitates a general state of reduced goal motivation, parallel effects were observed on the willingness to delay gratification for future outcomes (Study 2), orientation toward the future (Study 3), and behavioral activation system (BAS) sensitivity (Study 4). Moreover, Study 3 showed that these effects were mediated by a generally pessimistic attitude toward life. Finally, Study 5 assessed felt uncertainty and state depression, revealing that withdrawal from life was associated with reduced uncertainty but increased depression. Discussion is focused on implications for theories of threat and defense, and applications for understanding depression and suicide.

Implicit Theories of Change and Stability Moderate Effects of Subjective Distance on the Remembered Self.

Temporal self-appraisal theory suggests that people can regulate current self-view by recalling former selves in ways that flatter present identity. People critique their subjectively distant (but not recent) former selves, creating the illusion of improvement over time. However, this revisionist strategy might not apply to everyone: People with fixed (entity) beliefs may not benefit from critiquing even distant selves. In three studies, we found that implicit theories of change and stability moderate the effects of subjective distance on the remembered self. In all studies, participants rated past selves portrayed as subjectively close or distant (controlling calendar time). Incremental theorists (but not entity theorists) were more critical of their subjectively distant (but not recent) past attributes. We found the same pattern when measuring existing implicit theories (Studies 1, 2) or manipulating them (Study 3). The present research is the first to integrate temporal self-appraisal theory and the implicit theories literature.

Changing theories of change: strategic shifting in implicit theory endorsement.

People differ in their implicit theories about the malleability of characteristics such as intelligence and personality. These relatively chronic theories can be experimentally altered, and can be affected by parent or teacher feedback. Little is known about whether people might selectively shift their implicit beliefs in response to salient situational goals. We predicted that, when motivated to reach a desired conclusion, people might subtly shift their implicit theories of change and stability to garner supporting evidence for their desired position. Any motivated context in which a particular lay theory would help people to reach a preferred directional conclusion could elicit shifts in theory endorsement. We examine a variety of motivated situational contexts across 7 studies, finding that people's theories of change shifted in line with goals to protect self and liked others and to cast aspersions on disliked others. Studies 1-3 demonstrate how people regulate their implicit theories to manage self-view by more strongly endorsing an incremental theory after threatening performance feedback or memories of failure. Studies 4-6 revealed that people regulate the implicit theories they hold about favored and reviled political candidates, endorsing an incremental theory to forgive preferred candidates for past gaffes but leaning toward an entity theory to ensure past failings "stick" to opponents. Finally, in Study 7, people who were most threatened by a previously convicted child sex offender (i.e., parents reading about the offender moving to their neighborhood) gravitated most to the entity view that others do not change. Although chronic implicit theories are undoubtedly meaningful, this research reveals a previously unexplored source of fluidity by highlighting the active role people play in managing their implicit theories in response to goals.