关键词: 时间洞察力 现在享乐个体 未来定向个体 解释水平 食品选择偏好

Abstract: Time plays an important role on decision-making and actions in people’s daily life, and different people have different perception of time. Time perspective reflects personality difference on time dimension, which can be mainly divided into present time perspective and future time perspective, and they represent the mental representation towards present and future respectively. Previous studies have showed that there was a relationship between time perspective and choice preference. Food choice behavior is a typical behavior in daily behavior. This goal of this is to examine the difference of food choice preference between present time perspective and future time perspective people from the explicit and implicit view. And we also aim to explore the role of construal level in the relationship between time perspective and food choice preference. In the study, we conducted two experiments: In experiment 1, we used ‘Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory’ to pick out college students with Present-Hedonistic perspective or future time perspective (30 Present-Hedonistic perspective vs. 30 future time perspective people) to participate in the Food Choice Task. All participants made a choice between healthy food and unhealthy food. The results showed the subjects with Present-Hedonistic perspective have a higher unhealthy food rate than those with future time perspective. In the experiment 2, we use SC-IAT (Single Category Implicit Association Test) and employ a 2 (Present-Hedonistic perspective vs. future time perspective) × 3(high construal level vs. low construal level vs. control construal level) between-subjects design. Time perspective is one independent variable as the between-subjects factor measured by Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, and construal level is another independent variable as between-subjects factor, which is operated by Thinking Reasoning Start Task. And 90 participants received different operations. The dependent variable is an indicator called D value that computed by response time which suggest people’s implicit preference on palatable but unhealthy food products. The results showed that the subjects with Present-Hedonistic perspective have a higher D value than those with future time perspective; the people with low construal level have a higher D value than control group, and the control group are significantly higher than high construal level; time perspective and construal level have an interaction on food choice preference. For people with Present-Hedonistic perspective, the difference of construal level has a significant impact on unhealthy food choice preference And for people with future time perspective, the difference of construal level has no significant impact on unhealthy food choice preference. From what have discussed above, we can draw the conclusion that: firstly, the individuals with different time perspective have different food choice preference. The people with present perspective have unhealthy food choice preference, and its performance on food choice task and implicit preference from the explicit and implicit view. And for people with Present-Hedonistic perspective, the construal level significantly affects unhealthy food choice preference, namely high construal level people have less unhealthy food choice preference. But for people with Present-Hedonistic perspective, the effect of construal level is not significant.

Key words: time perspective, future time orientation, present-hedonistic, construal level, food choice preference