Perceptions of Self-Affect: Now and in the Future

Abstract

Subjects were asked to provide self-applicability ratings for positive and negative affect items from the PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) in either a present time frame (“How do you feel now?”) or a future time frame (“How will you feel five years from now?”). Both response times to the items and the applicability ratings were analyzed. Subjects' response times yielded the usual prototypicality curves for both positive and negative emotion terms in the present context, but only for positive emotion terms in the future context. Subjects' applicability ratings indicated that positive emotion terms were generally perceived as more applicable to the self than negative emotion terms, but that the positive emotion terms were thought to be even more applicable in the future than they are now. Finally, the results indicated that the responses to positive and negative items were not always independent, particularly in the future context. The implications of these data for Markus' (1990) ideas about possibl...