When people share their experiences, they can communicate seemingly identical information from different time perspectives. Time perspective manifests in words—specifically, verbs in the past tense (e.g., “the experience was great”), the present tense (e.g., “the experience is great”), or the future tense (e.g., “the experience will be great”). This research considers whether this linguistic shift in time perspective impacts how others interpret the message. Two naturalistic studies (sourcing over 2 million Amazon reviews) and three pre-registered lab experiments (N = 1259) find that reviews written in the present tense (relative to the past or future tense) receive higher helpfulness ratings through a process of heightened concrete construal. Implications at the intersection of communication, psycholinguistics, and persuasion are discussed.

当人们分享他们的经历时，他们可以从不同的时间角度传达看似相同的信息。时间视角体现在词语中——具体来说，动词的过去时态（例如，“体验很棒”）、现在时态（例如，“体验很棒”）或将来时态（例如，“体验将是伟大的”）。这项研究考虑了这种时间视角的语言转变是否会影响其他人如何解释信息。两项自然主义研究（来源超过 200 万条亚马逊评论）和三项预先注册的实验室实验 ( N = 1259）发现以现在时（相对于过去或将来时）撰写的评论通过强化具体解释过程获得更高的有用性评级。讨论了沟通、心理语言学和说服的交叉点的含义。