Measuring defensiveness against future anxiety: Telepression

This study attempted to create an analogue through which the concept oftelepression (or futurity defensiveness) could be measured. A total of 54 undergraduate college students participated in the study; 27 experimental subjects were exposed to a “threatening” lecture on world ecology and 27 control subjects to a “neutral” lecture. Major hypotheses were generally confirmed using the Rappaport Time Line (RTL), a spatial representation of temporal experience. Experimental subjects showed a dramatic increase in “past” emphasis and a tendency to constrict present and future time zones on specific temporal indices on the RTL. Results are interpreted as confirming that psychological defense operates in terms offuture anxiety, much as defenses work on the avoidance of the past.