Time to Flourish: Time perspective and level of identity consistency in flourishing individuals

The study of mental well-being has a long history, but it isn´t until the last decade or so that it has regain interest in psychology with the establishment of positive psychology as a new research discipline. The present research builds on theories of mental well-being as a continuum, in which complete mental health is labeled flourishing and incomplete mental well-being is categorized languishing, people in between are moderately mentally healthy, and relates it to theories of an individual´s time perspective and identity consistency. We propose that flourishing individuals will have a balanced time perspective that allows them to have a positive view of the past, be engaged in the present, and to have a positive framing of the future as well as display a consistency across different social roles. A questionnaire with the scales of MHC-SF, the S-ZTPI, and measures of identity consistency was distributed among commuters (N = 110) on domestic trains in Sweden. The study had no languishing individuals, but the results showed that flourishing individuals tend to have a more positive framing of the future as well as a more consistent identity across different social roles than moderately mentally healthy. Future research should develop the scales as well as explore a possible incongruence between the different subscales of the MHC-SF and its implication for mental well-being