Temporal distancing during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Letter writing with future self can mitigate negative affect

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is spreading across the world, threatening not only physical health but also psychological well-being. We reasoned that a broadened temporal perspective may attenuate current mental distress and tested a letter-writing manipulation designed to connect people to their post-COVID-19 future selves. We conducted an online experiment with 738 Japanese participants recruited from two common survey platforms. They...