Puceptualand Molor SkilCr, 1992, 74, 1171-1180. O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1992
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING TIME ORIENTATION I N UNDERGRADUATES ' TARA FIDLER, KIM A. DAWSON, AND ROY GALLANT Mount Allison University
Summary.-282 undergraduate students between 17 and 68 ye&s of age were asked to list the 5 most significant experiences of their lives, to assign time zones to these experiences, and to provide estimates of emotional valence corresponding to each significant life experience they listed. Subjects also provided judgements of time perdnd a positive emospective on a Life Line. The sample showed a near-past orien~ac~on tional valence across the experiences reported. However, the first experiences reported were distant past experiences significantly more frequently than expected by chance, while the last experiences in the Experiential Inventory were significantly more often located in the distant future. While this result validates the prevailing assumption of a unidirectional flow of past to future, empirical evidence was also found for the larger rnagrurude and variability of future as compared with past perspective. This suggests a bl&ecr~onal model of time should be invoked to explain the differing character of the opponent temporal processes of recall and anticipation in human experience. "Time i n its experiential sense is the unifying element of consciousness, a process that ascribes unity to the perception of the self in a world of constant change. T i e provides a sense of identity to the experience of discontinuous emotional states and to the perception of discontinuity in change. . . . The urufying property of time makes what was before, what is now, and what will be next appear related in a causal, personal way" (Hartocollis, 1983, p. 3).
While the psychological experience of time is traditionally separated into components of past, present, and future, subjective time may be equally viewed as unifying all life experience within the process of change. Despite their apparent separability, past, present, and future are, in fact, unified within time. If this could be shown to be the case empirically, it would be invalid to attempt to distinguish among the three orientations or dimensions of linear time. Instead, the dimensions of time would be "the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things future" (Fraisse, 1963, p. 151). I n everyday life, memory looks back into the past and expectation looks forward to view the future, all from the fleeting moment of attention to the present. The images brought forward from the past by our memories, like the imagined future consequences of our actions now, are perceived in the present. By differentiating facets of time in this way, while realizing the present is the point of experience about which past and future perspectives pivot, we may gain a better understanding of how past, present, and future are integrated in the human experience of time. Cottle (1968) devised a convenient method by which a study of tem'Address correspondence to Kim A. Dawson, Department of Psychology, Social Sciences Division, Capilano College, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V7J 3H5.
1172
T. FIDLER, ETAL.
poral orientation may be conducted. While acknowledging the unity of past, present, and future in time, Cottle's Experiential Inventory provides an empirical basis for whether temporal orientation is predominantly recollective, presentive, or anticipatory; uni- or bidirectional. Cottle (1968) found (in a sample of military personnel) evidence of a predominance of near-past experiences, a paucity of future experiences, and an inverse relation between past and future. In this study, we are engaged in two tasks. First, we attempt to replicate Cottle's findings for a nonmilitary sample. Second, we attend to the need for empirical evidence based on human experience for the prevailing assumptions of unidirectional time (which moves from past through present to future) and of greater uncertainty in future than in past experience. We find that a bidirectional model may represent better the way the temporally opposite cognitive processes of recall and anticipation are unified withln the larger framework of temporal experience. METHOD Subjects were 282 students enrolled in Introductory Psychology at Mount Allison University. Of these, 166 women and 72 men indicated their gender as requested. The age range of subjects was 17 to 68 years (mean age = 19.9 yr., SD = 5.5). Students were given a questionnaire on temporal orientation as a class exercise without being informed about theory or any aspect of the study. The first section of the questionnaire was Cottle's (1968) Experiential Inventory. The next section was the Life Line as derived from Gorman, Wessman, Schmeidler, Thayer, and Mannuci (1973). The final section requested magnitude estimations of year-length at past ages, data which are reported elsewhere (Gallant, Fidler, & Dawson, 1991). Cottle's (1968) Experiential Inventory "asks respondents to take an aerial view of their total life space in order that they may select out the 'more important' experiences" (p. 135). The first set of instructions for the Inventory were as follows: Please list in the table below the five most significant, important, or salient experiences of your life. These may be experiences that you have had, experiences you are hav~ng,as well as experiences you expect co have. You only need to write a few words for each experience and you may lisc your experiences in any order you wish.
After subjects had completed this task, the instructions were to ~ r o v i d e judgements of the time-zones corresponding to these significant life experiences. The time-zones (and associated scores) were distant past ( I ) , near past (2), present (3), near future (4), or distant future (5). Following previous studies (Lomranz, Shmotkin, Zechovoy, & Rosenberg, 1985; Lamm, Schmidt, & Trornmsdorf, 1976; Roos & Albers, 1965), the subjects were also asked to report their age at the time of each experience and to rate each experience on an emotional impact scale. The emotional impacts (and associated scores) were very negative ( I ) , slightly negative (2), neutral or can't decide (31,
TIME ORIENTATION
1173
slightly positive (4), or very positive (5). The frequencies of reports of time zones, emotional impact, and ages were tallied and chi-squared tests performed. The average of time zones, emotional impacts, and ages listed across experiences were also computed. To test predictions of age variance and sex differences, the Life Line task, an analog measure of time perspective, was modified from Gorman, et a/. (1973). This also enabled us to test the hypothesis that time over the years of a person's life is represented according to a power function (Gorman, et al., 1973). Subjects were given two 15-cm parallel lines (separated by 0.5 cm) and asked to do the following: Consider the strip below as your Life Line. Please mark off with a slash perpendicular to the Life Line the time points of: 1. Your birch (label this line "B"); 2. Your death (label this line "D"); 3. Your present position in life (label this line "P"). Now refer back to the five experiences you listed on the previous page and mark off the time-point on your Life Line corresponding to each experience. Please number the experiences on the Life Line in the order in which you initially wrote them (i.e., from 1 to 5, corresponding to each experience).
The following scores were derived from the Life Line (in mm): distance from birth to present, distance from most distant past experience to present, &stance from present to death, and distance from present to most distant future experience. To assess whether Stevens' power function applies not only to the estimation of spans of time given by the experimenter (Gorman, et al., 1973) but also to estimated amounts of chronological time with respect to actual age, the distance from birth to present was regressed on chronological age and, subsequently, on the logarithm of chronological age.
RESULTS Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and ranges of all measures analyzed in this study. The differing values of n were of immediate concern but were not related to systematic variation in the data. There were no differences on any measure between those who had and those who had not reported personal gender. Another case of differing ns was in the distance of present to farthest future experience reported whlch could only be measured on the Life Line of those who had listed future experiences. While thls amounted to over half of the original sample (148 cases), there were no significant differences between the subsamples with (148 cases) and without (134 cases) future experiences on any measure. No sex differences in means or variances were evident in any measure. This permitted pooling across gender to obtain over-d averages. I t should be noted (in Table I.) that as experience number (list position) increased, mean time zone and mean age also increased.
1174
T. FIDLER, ET AL TABLE 1 MEANS,STANDARD DEVIATIONS, A N D RANGES OF EXPERIENTIAL INVENTORY AND LIFE-LINEMEASURES Measure
N
M
SD
Range
Experiential Inventory Exp. 1 Time Zone Exp. 2 Time Zone Exp. 3 Time Zone Exp. 4 Time Zone Exp. 5 Time Zone M Exp. Time Zone Exp. 1 Emotion Exp. 2 Emotion Exp. 3 Emotion Exp. 4 Emotion Exp. 5 Emotion M Exp. Emotion Exp. 1 Age Exp. 2 Age Exp. 3 Age Exp. 4 Age Exp. 5 Age M Exp. Age Life-Line Distances (mm) Birth to Present Present to Death Past to Present Present to Future Percent of Life Lived Note.-Exp. =Experience list number in Experiential Inventory; M Exp. =Score averaged across all five experiences.
As shown in Table 1, average time-zone was 2.4, indicating a near-past orientation in the sample as a whole. Average experiential age was 18.2 years which, when compared to the mean chronological age of the sample (19.9 yr.), clearly supported the near-past orientation deduced from the average experiential time zone. Emotional ratings did not change systematically across experiences but the average emotional impact rating of 3.9 reflects a slightly positive attribution to significant life experiences over-all. It can also be seen in Table 1 that means and variances from the Life Line measures were consistently different, presumably due to the differing directionality or experience of past and future. Both distances of the past n t past-to-present) had smaller means and varimeasures ( b i r t h - t ~ - ~ r e s e and ances than the distances of the future measures (present-to-death and present-to-future). The drastic decline in complete responses in the case of present-to-future distance should be noted as it represents a bias not to report future experiences.
1175
TIME ORIENTATION
Analyzed next was the hypothesis that Stevens' power law for short durations can be generalized to the passing of long-term durations. Birthto-present distances (corresponding to subjective time) were submitted to regression analyses on objective time, in this case, chronological age (F,,,,,= 26.62, p
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FOR ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING TIME ORIENTATION I N UNDERGRADUATES ' TARA FIDLER, KIM A. DAWSON, AND ROY GALLANT Mount Allison University
Summary.-282 undergraduate students between 17 and 68 ye&s of age were asked to list the 5 most significant experiences of their lives, to assign time zones to these experiences, and to provide estimates of emotional valence corresponding to each significant life experience they listed. Subjects also provided judgements of time perdnd a positive emospective on a Life Line. The sample showed a near-past orien~ac~on tional valence across the experiences reported. However, the first experiences reported were distant past experiences significantly more frequently than expected by chance, while the last experiences in the Experiential Inventory were significantly more often located in the distant future. While this result validates the prevailing assumption of a unidirectional flow of past to future, empirical evidence was also found for the larger rnagrurude and variability of future as compared with past perspective. This suggests a bl&ecr~onal model of time should be invoked to explain the differing character of the opponent temporal processes of recall and anticipation in human experience. "Time i n its experiential sense is the unifying element of consciousness, a process that ascribes unity to the perception of the self in a world of constant change. T i e provides a sense of identity to the experience of discontinuous emotional states and to the perception of discontinuity in change. . . . The urufying property of time makes what was before, what is now, and what will be next appear related in a causal, personal way" (Hartocollis, 1983, p. 3).
While the psychological experience of time is traditionally separated into components of past, present, and future, subjective time may be equally viewed as unifying all life experience within the process of change. Despite their apparent separability, past, present, and future are, in fact, unified within time. If this could be shown to be the case empirically, it would be invalid to attempt to distinguish among the three orientations or dimensions of linear time. Instead, the dimensions of time would be "the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things future" (Fraisse, 1963, p. 151). I n everyday life, memory looks back into the past and expectation looks forward to view the future, all from the fleeting moment of attention to the present. The images brought forward from the past by our memories, like the imagined future consequences of our actions now, are perceived in the present. By differentiating facets of time in this way, while realizing the present is the point of experience about which past and future perspectives pivot, we may gain a better understanding of how past, present, and future are integrated in the human experience of time. Cottle (1968) devised a convenient method by which a study of tem'Address correspondence to Kim A. Dawson, Department of Psychology, Social Sciences Division, Capilano College, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V7J 3H5.
1172
T. FIDLER, ETAL.
poral orientation may be conducted. While acknowledging the unity of past, present, and future in time, Cottle's Experiential Inventory provides an empirical basis for whether temporal orientation is predominantly recollective, presentive, or anticipatory; uni- or bidirectional. Cottle (1968) found (in a sample of military personnel) evidence of a predominance of near-past experiences, a paucity of future experiences, and an inverse relation between past and future. In this study, we are engaged in two tasks. First, we attempt to replicate Cottle's findings for a nonmilitary sample. Second, we attend to the need for empirical evidence based on human experience for the prevailing assumptions of unidirectional time (which moves from past through present to future) and of greater uncertainty in future than in past experience. We find that a bidirectional model may represent better the way the temporally opposite cognitive processes of recall and anticipation are unified withln the larger framework of temporal experience. METHOD Subjects were 282 students enrolled in Introductory Psychology at Mount Allison University. Of these, 166 women and 72 men indicated their gender as requested. The age range of subjects was 17 to 68 years (mean age = 19.9 yr., SD = 5.5). Students were given a questionnaire on temporal orientation as a class exercise without being informed about theory or any aspect of the study. The first section of the questionnaire was Cottle's (1968) Experiential Inventory. The next section was the Life Line as derived from Gorman, Wessman, Schmeidler, Thayer, and Mannuci (1973). The final section requested magnitude estimations of year-length at past ages, data which are reported elsewhere (Gallant, Fidler, & Dawson, 1991). Cottle's (1968) Experiential Inventory "asks respondents to take an aerial view of their total life space in order that they may select out the 'more important' experiences" (p. 135). The first set of instructions for the Inventory were as follows: Please list in the table below the five most significant, important, or salient experiences of your life. These may be experiences that you have had, experiences you are hav~ng,as well as experiences you expect co have. You only need to write a few words for each experience and you may lisc your experiences in any order you wish.
After subjects had completed this task, the instructions were to ~ r o v i d e judgements of the time-zones corresponding to these significant life experiences. The time-zones (and associated scores) were distant past ( I ) , near past (2), present (3), near future (4), or distant future (5). Following previous studies (Lomranz, Shmotkin, Zechovoy, & Rosenberg, 1985; Lamm, Schmidt, & Trornmsdorf, 1976; Roos & Albers, 1965), the subjects were also asked to report their age at the time of each experience and to rate each experience on an emotional impact scale. The emotional impacts (and associated scores) were very negative ( I ) , slightly negative (2), neutral or can't decide (31,
TIME ORIENTATION
1173
slightly positive (4), or very positive (5). The frequencies of reports of time zones, emotional impact, and ages were tallied and chi-squared tests performed. The average of time zones, emotional impacts, and ages listed across experiences were also computed. To test predictions of age variance and sex differences, the Life Line task, an analog measure of time perspective, was modified from Gorman, et a/. (1973). This also enabled us to test the hypothesis that time over the years of a person's life is represented according to a power function (Gorman, et al., 1973). Subjects were given two 15-cm parallel lines (separated by 0.5 cm) and asked to do the following: Consider the strip below as your Life Line. Please mark off with a slash perpendicular to the Life Line the time points of: 1. Your birch (label this line "B"); 2. Your death (label this line "D"); 3. Your present position in life (label this line "P"). Now refer back to the five experiences you listed on the previous page and mark off the time-point on your Life Line corresponding to each experience. Please number the experiences on the Life Line in the order in which you initially wrote them (i.e., from 1 to 5, corresponding to each experience).
The following scores were derived from the Life Line (in mm): distance from birth to present, distance from most distant past experience to present, &stance from present to death, and distance from present to most distant future experience. To assess whether Stevens' power function applies not only to the estimation of spans of time given by the experimenter (Gorman, et al., 1973) but also to estimated amounts of chronological time with respect to actual age, the distance from birth to present was regressed on chronological age and, subsequently, on the logarithm of chronological age.
RESULTS Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, and ranges of all measures analyzed in this study. The differing values of n were of immediate concern but were not related to systematic variation in the data. There were no differences on any measure between those who had and those who had not reported personal gender. Another case of differing ns was in the distance of present to farthest future experience reported whlch could only be measured on the Life Line of those who had listed future experiences. While thls amounted to over half of the original sample (148 cases), there were no significant differences between the subsamples with (148 cases) and without (134 cases) future experiences on any measure. No sex differences in means or variances were evident in any measure. This permitted pooling across gender to obtain over-d averages. I t should be noted (in Table I.) that as experience number (list position) increased, mean time zone and mean age also increased.
1174
T. FIDLER, ET AL TABLE 1 MEANS,STANDARD DEVIATIONS, A N D RANGES OF EXPERIENTIAL INVENTORY AND LIFE-LINEMEASURES Measure
N
M
SD
Range
Experiential Inventory Exp. 1 Time Zone Exp. 2 Time Zone Exp. 3 Time Zone Exp. 4 Time Zone Exp. 5 Time Zone M Exp. Time Zone Exp. 1 Emotion Exp. 2 Emotion Exp. 3 Emotion Exp. 4 Emotion Exp. 5 Emotion M Exp. Emotion Exp. 1 Age Exp. 2 Age Exp. 3 Age Exp. 4 Age Exp. 5 Age M Exp. Age Life-Line Distances (mm) Birth to Present Present to Death Past to Present Present to Future Percent of Life Lived Note.-Exp. =Experience list number in Experiential Inventory; M Exp. =Score averaged across all five experiences.
As shown in Table 1, average time-zone was 2.4, indicating a near-past orientation in the sample as a whole. Average experiential age was 18.2 years which, when compared to the mean chronological age of the sample (19.9 yr.), clearly supported the near-past orientation deduced from the average experiential time zone. Emotional ratings did not change systematically across experiences but the average emotional impact rating of 3.9 reflects a slightly positive attribution to significant life experiences over-all. It can also be seen in Table 1 that means and variances from the Life Line measures were consistently different, presumably due to the differing directionality or experience of past and future. Both distances of the past n t past-to-present) had smaller means and varimeasures ( b i r t h - t ~ - ~ r e s e and ances than the distances of the future measures (present-to-death and present-to-future). The drastic decline in complete responses in the case of present-to-future distance should be noted as it represents a bias not to report future experiences.
1175
TIME ORIENTATION
Analyzed next was the hypothesis that Stevens' power law for short durations can be generalized to the passing of long-term durations. Birthto-present distances (corresponding to subjective time) were submitted to regression analyses on objective time, in this case, chronological age (F,,,,,= 26.62, p
