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This study investigated how adolescents' Big Five personality traits are related to mental health (i.e., happiness) and mental illness (i.e., depressive symptoms and anxiety) and whether their time perspectives may be potential mediators of these relations. The sample included 235 high school students (54.5% girls), aged between 15 and 18 (M = 16.87, SD = 0.68). The results indicated that adolescents with higher emotional stability also reported higher levels of happiness and lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety, whereas those with high levels of extraversion or conscientiousness experienced higher happiness. Further, adolescents with low levels of past negative or high levels of past positive time perspectives also reported high levels of happiness and low levels of mental illness. Furthermore, high levels of present fatalist and low levels of present hedonist time perspectives were associated with low levels of happiness. Our findings provided evidence for the mediating role of the past negative and past positive time perspectives for the relations of extraversion, emotional stability and agreeableness with both mental health and mental illness. Finally, the present hedonistic time perspective mediated the relations of extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness with happiness, whereas the present fatalist time perspective mediated the relation between emotional stability and happiness. Our study highlights the importance of time perspectives as mediational factors for the relations of the personality traits with adolescents' mental health and mental illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between a balanced time perspective and life satisfaction has been demonstrated in previous studies, yet the potential mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. The current study tested whether a latent factor "temporal negative affect" underlay anxiety and depression and whether this latent factor mediated the relationship between balanced time perspective and life satisfaction. To assess life satisfaction, time perspectives, anxiety and depression, a total of 995 university students aged from 17 to 25 years were recruited. Structural equation modelling analysis demonstrated that the latent factor "temporal negative affect" consisted of anxiety and depression and played a mediating role in the relationship between balanced time perspective and life satisfaction. These findings can deepen our understanding of how time perspectives potentially influence life satisfaction, offering new directions towards enhancing well-being in health and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent gerontological research has identified the sense of coherence as a crucial resilience factor which develops over time and evolves from experiences across the life-span. Time perspective is the process by which life experiences are assigned to temporal categories which give coherence to these experiences. In the present study, we tested the salutogenic hypothesis that time perspective reflects a psychological resource that shapes the sense of coherence, and that both are important predictors of positive aging as indicated by subjective well-being and psychological health. We examined 210 individuals (60.5% women) at the mean age of 70.4 years using the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, a questionnaire measuring five time perspective dimensions and a balanced time perspective. We found that (a) two time perspectives—a lack of concentration on the negative past and a high future orientation—predicted the sense of coherence, and that (b) the sense of coherence was a mediator of the time perspective dimensions-positive aging relationship. An exploratory path analytical model fitted our data well. Furthermore, (c) a balanced time perspective was associated with both the sense of coherence and positive aging, disclosing partial mediation of the sense of coherence. With regards to our analytical model, the sense of coherence and—to a lesser degree—time perspective dimensions and a balanced temporal perspective are important correlates of positive aging. In line with recent salutogenic research, our findings suggest that the sense of coherence represents a higher-order concept which pools psychological resource influences on positive aging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of this study were to determine the relations between having a balanced time perspective (BTP) with various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and to test how various operationalizations of a BTP might impact the relation between having a BTP and SWB. We operationalized a balanced time perspective using: (a) Drake et al.'s Time Soc 17(1):47-61, () cut-off-point method, (b) Boniwell et al.'s J Posit Psychol 5(1):24-40, () suggestion of using a hierarchical cluster analysis, and (c) a deviation from a balanced time perspective (DBTP; Stolarski et al. Time Soc, ). The results demonstrated that having a BTP is related to increased satisfaction with life, happiness, positive affect, psychological need satisfaction, self-determination, vitality, and gratitude as well as decreased negative affect. Also, the DBTP was the best predictor of SWB. We discuss why individuals with a BTP are likely to be happier in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]