Social Class and Social Time Perspective

Abstract

The present research introduces and provisionally tests an improved methodological procedure (the Social Time Perspective Scale) for determining class-linked differences in the way persons anticipate the future and orient their behavior to it. Data for this analysis are drawn from a sample of freshmen in college who come largely, but not entirely, from middle-class backgrounds and from a sample of Job Corpsmen who come primarily from lower-class backgrounds. The findings reveal that: (1) lowerclass youth in the Job Corps have a more circumscribed notion of future time than youth from the middle class and their outlook on the future is less systematically ordered; (2) upwardly mobile lower-class youth in college have succeeded in incorporating some features of the middle-class pattern of future orientation in their temporal outlook, but residues of their lower-class backgrounds are still present; and (3) in both the lowerand middle-class samples, the length of temporal perspectives is a factor mediating effective role performance. The effects of social class upon the development of future time perspectives have been the object of much speculation and inquiry. Various theories have been advanced to explain social class differences in temporal perspectives (see O'Rand, 1969:1-38). Yet our state of knowledge is still in its formative stage. Those studies providing the most consistent evidence of class-linked differences in temporal perspectives tend to be rich in substantive detail but lacking in methodological rigor (Davis and Dollard, 1940; Horton, 1967; Liebow, 1967). Those studies attempting to offer more precise evidence often turn up inconsistent results, partially because the methodology employed is inadequate for the task at hand (cf. Doob, 1971; Lessing, 1968; O'Rand,