Southern University of Science and Technology, Canada
This study examines how temporal orientation evolves over time, changes at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the period following the pandemic’s onset. Based on event system theory, we claim that the onset of the pandemic creates a strong event because it is highly novel, disruptive, and critical. Applying machine learning text analysis technique, this study extracted past, present, and future temporal orientation out of a total of 2,502,748 tweets, from 3979 individuals over 78 months. Discontinuous Growth Modeling framework is then used to test the baseline trajectory temporal orientation, how COVID-19 causes immediate changes that diverge from the baseline trajectory at the onset of the pandemic, and what is the long-lasting recovery effect after the occurrence of the pandemic. Results showed that (a) all the three aspects of temporal orientations evolve over time before the event, (b) there were immediate increases or decreases in each temporal orientation at the onset of the pandemic, and (c) longitudinal recovery effects last for a long run after the pandemic. Moreover, age explained individual differences of all these change processes. Theoretical contributions to temporal orientation literature and event system theory were discussed. Methodological advancements such as the use of big data and machine learning text analysis were also discussed.
