Association of time perspective with depression and anxiety: The role of repetitive negative thinking and humor styles

Time perspective (TP) refers to how individuals allocate their attention across different temporal categories. By doing so, they give meaning to those experiences. Deviance from Balanced Time Perspective (dBTP), on the other hand, refers to temporal biases resulting from the overuse/underuse of one or more temporal frames, especially the negative TPs. It has been consistently documented that such biases may result in adverse mental health consequences such as depression and anxiety. Repetitive negative thinking (i.e., rumination and worry), which is related to depression and anxiety, broadly refers to a thinking pattern by which individuals engage in repetitive, abstract, uncontrollable, pessimistic thoughts about past or future events. In contrast, the adaptive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) can act as a coping strategy by finding a humorous aspect of negative life events. Although robust evidence exists regarding the association between TP and numerous mental health outcomes, the underlying mechanism through which TPs are related to psychological distress has received little empirical attention. Similarly, the role of humor style as a moderating phenomenon has not been investigated much in the Turkish sample. Moreover, the buffering role of humor did not receive adequate attention in lessening the negative effect of repetitive negative thinking and deviation from balanced time perspective. The current study, therefore, aimed to explore the mediating role of worry/rumination on the association of dBTP with depression and anxiety and the moderating role of adaptive humor styles on the association of dBTP and RNT with depression and anxiety. The data were collected from 563 (483 women) individuals aged between 18 and 69 (M = 29.04, SD = 9.22) through scales assessing TP, worry, rumination, humor styles, depression, and anxiety. The findings indicated that the moderator role of adaptive humor styles was not significant. Furthermore, adaptive humor styles buffered the negative impact of neither dBTP nor rumination on depression and anxiety. However, both rumination and worry significantly mediated the association of dBTP with depression and anxiety. Deviation from balanced TP, which was linked with RNT, turned out to be associated with elevated levels of depression and anxiety. As a clinical implication, the findings of the current study may help clinicians shape their growing therapy technique, Time Perspective Therapy (TPT), considering depression and anxiety. Keywords: Time Perspective, Deviance from Balanced Time Perspective, Worry, Rumination, Adaptive humor styles, Depression, Anxiety