Future Time Insight And Life Satisfaction: A Moderated Mediation Model

Life satisfaction is an important factor which can reflect individuals' mental health,and the exploration of the predictors of life satisfaction is of great importance to this field.The main purpose of this study is to explore the complex internal mechanism of how future time perspective affects life satisfaction.Extant research has found that future time perspective can directly predict individuals' life satisfaction level.Previous research has found that future time perspective is closely related to mindfulness,and mindfulness can also significantly predict ones' life satisfaction.So,based on our study purpose,this study proposed that mindfulness can mediate the relationship between future time perspective and life satisfaction.Besides,self-control is also an important topic that has been extensively investigated by researchers.Previous research has found that self-control can positively predict ones' life satisfaction;Moreover,mindfulness can interact with self-control in predicting subjective well-being,which means that self-control can moderate the relationship between mindfulness and subjective well-being.Therefore,based on these studies,this study assumes that self-control is a moderator variable between the relationship of mindfulness and life satisfaction.All in all,the main purpose of this study is to explore the mediation effect of mindfulness between future time perspective and life satisfaction as well as the moderate effect of self-control.So that to reveal the complex internal mechanism of how future time perspective affects life satisfaction.Undergraduate students from two universities in Xi'an were tested by General Future Time Perspective Scale,Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale,Satisfaction with Life Scale and Self-control Scale.This study distributed and recycled 509 copies of the questionnaire,among which,483 copies are valid.The effective rate is 94.9%.Statistical analysis and path analysis of collected data are processed by SPSS 20.0?Amos 17.0 and Mplus 7.Results show that:(1)Demographic differences were found in future time perspective,mindfulness and life satisfaction.More specifically,there are major differences in future time perspective.Liberal arts students have higher scores than science and engineering students;and there are hometown differences in life satisfaction.Students from town areas showed higher scores than students from rural areas;and there are gender,major,grade differences in mindfulness.Girls have higher scores than boys,liberal arts students have higher scores than science and engineering students,and sophomore student have higher scores than freshman.(2)Correlation analysis shows that life satisfaction is significantly positively correlated with future time perspective,mindfulness and self-control.Self-control is significantly positively correlated with future time perspective and mindfulness.Finally,future time perspective and mindfulness are also significantly positively correlated.(3)Mindfulness partially mediates the relationship between college students'future time perspective and life satisfaction.On one hand,future time perspective can significantly predict life satisfaction directly;on the other hand,future time perspective can affects life satisfaction through the mediating effect of mindfulness indirectly.(4)The relationship between mindfulness and life satisfaction is moderated by self-control.More specifically,for individuals with higher self-control,mindfulness can significantly predict life satisfaction;but for those who with lower self-control,mindfulness cannot predict life satisfaction at all.In conclusion,results of this study show that,mindfulness partially mediates the relationship between future time perspective and life satisfaction,and that self-control significantly moderates the second stage of the mediating effect.This means that future time perspective,mindfulness,self-control and life satisfaction constitute a moderated mediation model together.This lodel theoretically revealed how future time perspective affects life satisfaction,and when/for whom the effect will be stronger.In practical terms,this model has an important guiding role in using the mediator variable(mindfulness)and the moderator variable(self-control)collectively to promote college students' life satisfaction.