Five experiments investigated the association between time and valence. In the first experiment, participants classified temporal expressions (e.g., past, future) and positively or negatively connotated words (e.g., glorious, nasty) based on temporal reference or valence. They responded slower and made more errors in the mismatched condition (positive/past mapped to one hand, negative/future to the other) compared with the matched condition (positive/future to one hand, negative/past to the other hand). Experiment 2 confirmed the generalization of the match effect to nonspatial responses, while Experiment 3 found no reversal of this effect for left-handers. Overall, the results of the three experiments indicate a robust match effect, associating the past with negative valence and the future with positive valence. Experiment 4 involved rating the valence of time-related words, showing higher ratings for future-related words. Additionally, Experiment 5 employed latent semantic analysis and revealed that linguistic experiences are unlikely to be the source of this time–valence association. An interactive activation model offers a quantitative explanation of the match effect, potentially arising from a favorable perception of the future over the past.

五个实验调查了时间和效价之间的关联。在第一个实验中，参与者根据时间参考或效价对时间表达（例如，过去、未来）和正面或负面含义的词（例如，光荣、讨厌）进行分类。与匹配条件（一只手是正/未来，另一只手是消极/过去）相比，他们在不匹配条件（一只手是正/过去，另一只手是消极/未来）中响应更慢，犯的错误也更多。实验 2 证实了匹配效应对非空间响应的泛化，而实验 3 发现这种效应对于左撇子没有逆转。总体而言，三个实验的结果表明了稳健的匹配效应，将过去与负价相关联，将未来与正价相关联。实验 4 涉及对时间相关词的效价进行评级，对未来相关词的评级更高。此外，实验 5 采用了潜在语义分析，并揭示了语言体验不太可能成为这种时间-价关联的来源。交互式激活模型提供了对匹配效应的定量解释，这可能是由于对未来的有利感知而不是过去的。