Abstract: Individual’s perception for future time is inevitably linked to the social motivation, pursuit of social goals, emotion regulation, and cognitive processing. According to socioemotional selectivity theory, the perceived time left to live is a composition of individual’s motivation which determines the priorities of social goals. When future time is perceived as limited, emotion regulationgoals assume primacy. In contrast, when future time is perceived as open-ended, knowledge-aquicition goals are prioritized. This paper provides a general instroduction and basic presumptions of the theory and reviews related empirical evidence. The paper also identifies several areas for future research development.

Key words: future time, future time perspective, socioemotional selectivity theory, social goal, social preference