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Introduction
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Jeff Joireman
Washington State University
W hen we say “time is of the essence” we often mean that, either within
the confines of a given situation, or within the broader context of our lives, we
have a limited amount of time to achieve a valued goal. We should therefore
pay close attention to how much time we have left to complete that goal. Time
rouses us from our slumber, time structures our days, and time helps to make
sense of our lives and the world. And, from the moment we are born, time pro-
vides a canvas upon which we paint a past, a present, and a future. This book
represents an attempt to understand how people’s thoughts, feelings, and be-
haviors are shaped by time. In this introductory chapter, we briefly review re-
search on time, and give an overview of the chapters contributed to this
volume.
TIME IN PSYCHOLOGY
Time has long been of interest to psychologists from a range of disciplines. Wil-
liam James (1890), for example, in his Principles of Psychology, included a discus-
4 STRATHMAN
quences (CFC) scale, whereas Zimbardo and his colleagues (Zimbardo & Boyd,
1999) developed the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). The CFC
scale measures the extent to which individuals think about the relatively imme-
diate versus distant consequences of their potential actions (e.g., I am willing to
sacrifice my immediate happiness or well-being in order to achieve future out-
comes). The CFC scale has excellent reliability and validity (Strathman et al.,
1994) and has been found to predict a range of theoretically relevant outcomes
including counterfactual reasoning (Boninger, Gleicher, & Strathman, 1994),
HIV testing (Dorr, Krueckeberg, Strathman, & Wood, 1999), proenviron-
mental behavior (Joireman, Lasane, Bennett, Richards, & Solaimani, 2001),
and hostility and aggression (Joireman, Anderson, & Strathman, 2003) (for a
recent review, see Joireman, Strathman, & Becker, 2004). As Boyd and
Zimbardo review in their chapter (chap. 5, this volume), the more recently in-
troduced Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory measures five dimensions of
time perspective, and has been found to predict a number of important out-
comes, including risky driving (Zimbardo, Keough, & Boyd, 1997) and drug and
alcohol use (Keough, Zimbardo, & Boyd, 1999).
The influence of time has shown up in a variety of other research domains as
well. Mischel (1974), for example, examined the concept of delay of gratification
and demonstrated that individuals will, in some cases, opt to delay receipt of a re-
ward if they will receive a larger reward at a later point in time (cf. Metcalfe &
Mischel, 1999). In his research on cooperation, Axelrod (1984) addressed the
importance of the future as it relates to cooperation. Axelrod suggested that co-
operation would be enhanced when people expected future interactions, using
the term “shadow of the future” to refer to the influence that the future has in
present decisions to cooperate. He suggested that stable cooperation requires
that the parties involved do not discount the significance of the future to any
great extent (see also Parks & Posey, chap. 12, this volume). Most recently,
Liberman and Trope (1998; Trope & Liberman, 2003) have demonstrated that
time (i.e., whether a behavior is in the near or distant future) can influence the
way in which we explain (i.e., construe) our own and others’ behavior.
The current volume overlaps with the work just outlined, but it is also unique.
Rather than focusing on a single aspect of time, such as time perception, time
orientation, or temporal construal, we approach the role of time in behavior by
first identifying broad domains of behavior in which time is likely to play a role
(goal setting, risk taking, interpersonal relations, organizational behavior), and
then asking experts in their respective fields to review work in their domain that
6 STRATHMAN
REFERENCES
Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New York: Basic Books.
Barndt, R. J., & Johnson, D. M. (1955). Time orientation in delinquents. Journal of Abnormal
and Social Psychology, 51, 343–345.
Boninger, D. S., Gleicher, F., & Strathman, A. (1994). Counterfactual thinking: From what
might have been to what may be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 297–307.
Cottle, T. J. (1976). Perceiving time: A psychological investigation with men and women. New
York: Wiley.
Dorr, N., Krueckeberg, S., Strathman, A., & Wood, M. D. (1999). Psychosocial correlates of
voluntary HIV antibody testing in college students. AIDS Education and Prevention, 11,
14–27.
Edwards, A. J. (2002). A psychology of orientation: Time awareness across life stages and in demen-
tia. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Gorman, B. S., & Wessman, A. E. (Eds.). (1997). The personal experience of time. New York:
Plenum Press.
James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York: Holt.
Joireman, J., Anderson, J., & Strathman, A. (2003). The aggression paradox: Understanding
links among aggression, sensation seeking, and the consideration of future consequences.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 1287–1302.
Joireman, J. A., Lasane, T. P., Bennett, J., Richards, D., & Solaimani, S. (2001). Integrating so-
cial value orientation and the consideration of future consequences within the extended
norm activation model of proenvironmental behavior. British Journal of Social Psychology,
40, 133–155.
Joireman, J., Strathman, A., & Becker, C. (2004). A review of the literature on individual differ-
ences in the consideration of future consequences. Manuscript submitted for publication.
1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
Keough, K. A., Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Who’s smoking, drinking, and using
drugs? Time perspective as a predictor of substance use. Basic and Applied Social Psychol-
ogy, 21, 149–164.
Kirsch, G., Nijkamp, P., & Zimmermann, K. (Eds). (1988). The formulation of time preferences
in a multidisciplinary perspective. Brookfield, VT: Gower.
Klineberg, S. L. (1968). Future time perspective and the preference for delayed reward. Jour-
nal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 253–257.
Lessing, E. E. (1972). Extension of personal future time perspective, age, and life satisfaction
of children and adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 6, 457–468.
Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (1998). The role of feasibility and desirability considerations in
near and distant future decisions: A test of temporal construal theory. Journal of Personal-
ity and Social Psychology, 75, 5–18.
Loewenstein, G. F., Read, D., & Baumeister, R. F. (Eds.). (2003). Time and decision: Economic
and psychological perspectives on intertemporal choice. New York: Russell Sage.
McGrath, J. E. (1988). The social psychology of time: New perspectives. New York: Sage.
Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool-system analysis of delay of gratification: Dy-
namics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3–19.
Mischel, W. (1974). Processes in delay of gratification. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in ex-
perimental social psychology (Vol. 7, pp. 249–292). New York: Academic Press.
Roeckelein, J. E. (2000). The concept of time in psychology: A resource book and annotated bibli-
ography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Sanders, S. (1986). The dimensions of subjective time experience. Unpublished doctoral dis-
sertation. University of Washington, Seattle.
Stewart, R. A. C. (1976). An experimental form of the Stewart Personality Inventory: A sim-
plified format measure of major personality dimensions. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 43,
813–814.
Strathman, A., Gleicher, F., Boninger, D. S., & Edwards, C. S. (1994). The consideration of
future consequences: Weighing immediate and distant outcomes of behavior. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 742–752.
Teahan, J. E. (1958). Future time perspective, optimism, and academic achievement. Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 57, 379–380.
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Psychological Review, 110, 403–421.
Zaleski, Z. (Ed.). (1994). Psychology of future orientation. Lublin, Poland: Towarzystwo
Naukowe KUL.
Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual
differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1271–1288.
Zimbardo, P. G., Keough, K. A., & Boyd, J. N. (1997). Present time perspective as a predictor
of risky driving. Personality and Individual Differences, 23, 1007–1023.
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Intrapersonal-Level
Processes
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Time Orientation
Measurement:
A Conceptual Approach
Terell P. Lasane
Deborah A. O’Donnell
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
time period. Likewise, a person with a dense future perspective may have a con-
centration of cognitions that are taking place for years after graduation from
college, retirement from a job, or when some personal investment has material-
ized. It is a reasonable postulate of research on time orientation that density in a
given temporal space will correlate reliably with various aspects of individual
behavior.
Valence refers to the subjective evaluation of the various time regions. For
some individuals, sentimental events may produce very positive images of the
past. Conversely, for others, the past may be a painful storehouse for memories
that produce feelings of hopelessness, despair, and even depression. Others may
find satisfaction with present life events and may respond negatively to future
events that will result in life events that will appreciably change this current pe-
riod of contentment and serenity. Still others may find dissatisfaction with pres-
ent circumstances and may view the future optimistically as a source of escape
from the harsh realities that they are currently experiencing. This evaluative
component of temporal experiences will likely have a major impact on the way
that an individual reacts in day-to-day experiences.
Accessibility is another dimension of time perspective that is related to sev-
eral of the dimensions we have discussed. The property of accessibility refers
to the ease with which an individual can recall and use information from a par-
ticular time frame. An individual with a long extension of past memories may
access information from the past region with greater facility than an individ-
ual who tends to extend far into a dense and positively evaluated future. Indi-
viduals with self-regulation difficulties of task completion may find it difficult
to accurately estimate the amount of time and attention it takes to complete a
particular task. The planning fallacy, which results in overly optimistic and er-
roneous predictions for how one’s plans will proceed, has been linked to poor
temporal accessibility. Poor temporal accessibility has been shown to be a pre-
dictor accounting for a great deal of the variance in this disruption in effective
self-regulation.
Another cognitive structure that underlies time perspective is the actual
content of these regions. The content of the past is contained in memories, the
content of the present is contained in experience, and the content of the future
is contained in expectancies. A great deal of the research on time orientation
has shown how life experience largely affects one’s ability to cognize, derive mo-
tivation, or to be emotionally affected by a particular time frame. Those who
come from cultures of relative deprivation, for instance, are often much more
present-time oriented than those from relatively economically affluent and
thriving societies. Indeed, it is impossible to assess how far one looks into the fu-
ture or how dense, valued, or accessible the future is without considering the
14 LASANE
specific feelings, experiences, and thoughts that have occupied the past and
present. The future is much more likely to be a source of motivation of present-
day activities and decisions if there are no serious threats to mere survival in
one’s past.
Structural organization is the final dimension that we discuss as a distinct
property of time perspective. This property refers to the organizing schemata
that connect the past, present, and future. Individuals vary in the way in which
they view the linkages between the past, present, and future. For instance, a
person who has a strong future perspective may see the past as driving the pres-
ent and the present as driving the future. More specifically, a college student
with a strong dominant future perspective may see hard work and parental guid-
ance as past events that have resulted in present college enrollment. Moreover,
these individuals may view the present as a step in a path to the future, which re-
quires completion of a number of subgoals in order for their future goals to be
met. On the contrary, a present-oriented college student may view the present
as totally distinct from, and unrelated to, a past plagued by disappointment and
failure, and such an individual may embrace each moment as intrinsically
meaningful in and of itself. In this scenario, the future may be viewed as a broad
and unspecific space that is not controllable and is merely the end result of the
passing of an infinite collection of random, unrelated “todays.” Research ex-
ploring the relationship among attributions, locus of control, and self-efficacy
bear these relationships out (Lasane & Jones, 1999; Platt & Eisenman, 1968;
Wiener, 1986).
the case in recent years that researchers have made an earnest attempt to pro-
vide coherent frameworks that would capture the disparate notions of temporal
experience into a unified study (Gjesme, 1983; McGrath, 1988). The prepon-
derance of the research that has addressed the social psychological correlates of
temporal experience has examined the predominant tendency for an individual
to be oriented toward a distinct region of temporal space. The constructs result-
ing from this have resulted in the use of interchangeable concepts of time orien-
tation and time perspective. Although most scholars in the field have defined
these concepts as the same, some subtle distinctions have been drawn between
the two.
The multidimensional aspect of time perspective and its concomitant corre-
lation with time orientation has been cited by several authors and is also levied
as a major concern in the valid and reliable measurement of the construct.
These concerns converge on the intuitively obvious recognition that it is impos-
sible to measure a construct that has as many conceptualizations as there are
measurement tools—both within and beyond the discipline of psychology
(Daltrey & Langer, 1984; Gjesme, 1981).
Research with time-related constructs should be regarded with caution be-
cause a unidimensional analysis has considerably less explanatory and predic-
tive power than does a program of research that attempts to integrate the
cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions that are captured in the aspects
discussed earlier. Recently, several research programs have endeavored to syn-
thesize these disparate studies and to formulate a theory that incorporates the
various dimensions in a unified way (Jones, 1988, 1993; Zimbardo & Boyd,
1999). These endeavors appear warranted in light of the disparate findings that
have emerged regarding the uni- versus multidimensional nature of time orien-
tation (Ruiz, Revich, & Krauss, 1967) and the often cited exigency of valid and
reliable measurement tools (Daltrey & Langer, 1984; Lessing, 1972;
Trommsdorff, 1983). In the present chapter, we give an overview of some of
these attempts to measure time orientation.
The bulk of time orientation research has revolved around the cognitive
component and has emphasized the future locus of space as the reference point
to which behaviors from the past or present are compared. Consistent with this
methodological and operational definition bias, many of the social psychology
time orientation measurement techniques have focused only on the cognitive
dimensions that were first delineated by Wallace (1956).
Kastenbaum (1961) asserted the erroneous tendency of researchers to em-
ploy the terms time orientation, time perspective, and time perception inter-
changeably. He enumerated the following dimensions of future time
orientation: extension, how far ahead an individual sees oneself; density, how
densely populated an individual views one’s future; coherence, the degree of or-
16 LASANE
ganization with which one sees one’s future; and directionality, the degree to
which one sees oneself moving ahead in the future. Daltrey and Langer (1984)
have used the same dimensions proposed by Wallace (1956) and added the di-
mension of attitude/affectivity to describe the evaluative manner in which an
individual approaches the future. These dimensions overlap considerably with
Jones’ (1993) conceptualization. These dimensions, with the exception of atti-
tude/affectivity and valence, consider mostly the cognitive aspects of time ori-
entation. Because many scholars have noted that the advancement of a social
psychology of time is tantamount to the synthesis of the various conceptualiza-
tions, some of these techniques may lack the conceptual breadth needed to cap-
ture the content validity of the construct (Nuttin, 1985; Trommsdorff, 1983).
As a psychological construct consisting of cognitive, affective, and behav-
ioral components, time orientation is best conceptualized as a synergistic pro-
cess involving multiple levels of intra- and interpersonal influence. As such, the
existing body of time orientation research has examined the phenomenon from
both projective and objective approaches, attempting to operationalize and
capture this illusive construct from both subjective intrapsychic and objective
direct methods of measurement. Each approach has its own set of strengths and
weaknesses.
There have been a number of projective techniques that have been employed to
measure temporal orientation. Most commonly, the Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT; Murray, 1938) is used. The TAT is a 20-item projective measure in
which an individual is shown pictures one at a time and asked to make up a story
about each picture. This measure has been traditionally used to assess an indi-
vidual’s personality with a special emphasis on dominant drives, emotions, sen-
timents, complexes, attitudes, and conflicts (Sweetland & Keyser, 1986).
Murray postulated that individuals would project their needs, emotions, con-
flicts, and attitudes onto the ambiguous pictures. Scoring involves subjectively
analyzing story content for various themes, with recurrent themes being indica-
tive of various personality dynamics. By focusing TAT administration and cod-
ing on motivational, affective, and cognitive components of time orientation,
time researchers have attempted to hone in on the intrapsychic processes that
drive the mental and psychological structures of time orientation.
Though often a rich source of qualitative data that can provide a window
into an individual’s drives, thoughts, and feelings, the psychometric properties
of the TAT have not been shown to be very impressive (Murphy & Davidshofer,
2. TIME ORIENTATION MEASUREMENT
1998). Some scoring systems have improved reliability, but the validity of the
TAT still remains unsubstantiated. Its use has clearly declined over the last 10
to 15 years (Dana, 1996), in both clinical and social psychological research.
An early time orientation study that used the TAT hypothesized that high
achievers would have a more predominant and extensive future time perspec-
tive than low achievers and that a positive relationship would be found between
optimism and extensiveness of future time perspective (Teahan, 1958). Data
were obtained from 60 seventh- and eighth-grade males. Thirty of the partici-
pants were high achievers (received grades in the upper quartile of their class
during the preceding 2 years) and 30 were low achievers (received grades in the
lower quartile for same period). Groups were equated for age and socioeco-
nomic status.
The researcher used three instruments to measure time perspective. The
first of these was a technique developed by Eson and Greenfield (1962). Partici-
pants were asked to record 25 things that they had thought or talked about dur-
ing the preceding 2-week period. Subjects then rated these items according to
whether, at the time they had thought/talked about them, they referred to
something in the past, present, or future. The second technique was the story
completion technique, first used by Leshan (1952). Subjects were required to
write a story starting with a partially completed statement or series of state-
ments. The following sentences were used: (a) “At three o’clock one bright,
sunny afternoon in May, two men were out walking near the edge of town …”
and (b) “Joe is having a cup of coffee in a restaurant. He’s thinking of the time to
come when .…” Finally, participants were presented with three TAT cards:
Card 1 (boy with violin), Card 12B (boy sitting alone before a cabin), and Card
14 (silhouette of person in window). Subjects were told to “write a story about
this picture.” At the end of the testing session, all subjects were asked: “How
much time was involved in the action of this story—not in writing it but in the
action described? How long would it have all taken if it had really happened?”
Each TAT response was rated by the examiner on 5-point scale according to
amount of optimism reflected in outcome. Two other judges rerated the TAT
stories of 33 subjects (16 high and 17 low achievers) in a reliability check. Cor-
relations were .85, .91, and .91 for cards 1, 12B, and 14, respectively. The story
completion (SC) task was least reliable in terms of correlations between scores
based on different stories. Consistent with their hypotheses, these researchers
found that high achievers tend to look mostly toward the future and have more
extensive future time perspective than low achievers on most of the projective
tests. Students high in future extension also appeared to be more optimistic.
Wohlford (1968) undertook a study examining extension of personal time
through the use of two projective techniques—the TAT and the SC task—in a
18 LASANE