It has been pointed out that people's negative emotions are rising due to the corona sickness.In this study, we hypothesized that thinking about the future alleviates negative emotions, and experimentally verified the effect of writing letters by imagining ourselves in the future.The task of writing a letter to oneself in the future has been shown to be effective in saving behavior, moral judgment, health promotion behavior, etc., but has not been considered in the field of mental health.

　The data will be obtained online from April 2020th to 4th, 13, and 15 experiment participants will write a letter to themselves one year later, "Letter Conditions for the Future", from one year later to the present. They were randomly assigned to "letter conditions from the future" to write letters and "control conditions" to write only about the present life.Before and after the experiment, emotional state and temporal distance (attitude with a long-term perspective at a distance from the present) were measured.

　As a result of the analysis, a similar decrease in negative emotions was observed in "letter conditions for the future" and "letter conditions from the future", but there was no significant change in "control conditions".Furthermore, it was found that this effect was due to the increased awareness that "the current state does not last forever" by writing a letter.

　This research shows the significance of taking a temporal distance (temporal distance) from the difficult situation and seeing the phenomenon of pandemic in the long run, while it is required to secure a social distance (social distance). rice field.Writing a letter does not require contact with people, so it is expected to be a self-care method that can be started immediately even under a pandemic.

Paper information:[Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being] Temporal distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Letter writing with future self can mitigate negative affect