The Role of Time Perspective in Coping Behavior

An extremely important component of a person's mental health and psychological well-being is the ability to independently define the purposes of one's life, and also to have available in one's image of the world an extended and substantial time perspective, oriented to the future. Time is one of the important but extremely little used resources of a person's mental organization and self-realization in society. As a consequence, in intricate social conflicts or difficult life situations, the loss of time perspective means the loss of one's life purposes, and is one of the symptoms of an approaching life crisis. In human formation and development, time determi- nants become an integral element of personality structure, consciousness, and the "developing-person" criterion (Zinchenko & Morgunov, 1994). Therefore, a person's time perspective can be considered as an indication of an ability to handle dif- ficult situations and to choose strategies for coping with them. As Zinchenko and Morgunov (1994) note, people can develop their personalities only when they are time-conscious: when they master time and create their own time.Another Russian psychologist, L. S. Vygotsky, points out that "human formation into an individual and personality assumes a specific combination or time coincidence of internal development processes with external conditions, which is typical for each age-stage of ontogenesis" (1982, p. 108). Hence, the formation of time perspective becomes a means of self-control, and of developing coping strategies in difficult situations. Today, studying the development of time perspectives, not only in the context of personality formation but also in the context of the development of coping strategies in conflict situations, has become a matter of primary importance. The theoretical-methodological basis of research in Russian psychology is presented by Vygotsky in his cultural-historical approach to understanding a person and her/his formation. The implementation of this approach has found its continuation and further development in the works of such prominent psychologists as L. I. Bozhovich, A. N. Leontiev, A. V. Zaporozhets, and D. B. Elconin, and also in the works of S. L. Rubinshtein and K. A. Abulhanova-Slavskaya on the prob- lems connected with the course of life and personal time, and also on the concept of personality chronotope highlighted by A. A. Uhtomsky, M. M. Bakhtin, and V. P. Zinchenko.Time perspectiveIn Russia, psychological problems related to a person's time perspective have been discussed by K. A. Abulhanova-Slavskaya, T. N. Berezina, A. K. Bolotova, E. I. Golovaha, A. K. Kronik, I. S. Kon, N. N. Tolstyh, E. N. Osin, A. Sircova, and others.With regard to the experience of time, Rubinshtein (1977) has put forward the idea of a person's course of life, a subjective picture of his/her life. Rubinshtein stresses the necessity of taking into account a person's ability to change his or her life. Another of Rubinshtein's concepts covers the subject of life and the principle of personality analysis through life activity.In foreign psychology the notion of time perspective has been introduced by Kurt Levin (2001), who views it as a person's vision of his or her future and past in the present. In addition, the cognitive choice and emotional experiences connected with past or future events can have an impact on the person's activity here and now, and can motivate future actions. B. V. Zeigarnik, Levin's pupil and a well-known Russian psychologist, believes that past experience, being an essential characteristic of a person's dynamics, can play an important role in determining life perspectives, setting time milestones, and reaching objectives. Zeigarnik points out that the ability to give a more or less objective assessment of a situation from the point view of its present and future development, and to find a way to set feasible goals, is a necessary and important condition for the formation of human personality (Zeigarnik, 1971). …