Present Time Perspective Research Articles

Communicating And Organizing In Time

The authors propose a theoretical framework identifying how work group members’ experience of time is created and sustained through task-related communication structures. The model addresses 10 dimensions of time—separation, scheduling, precision, pace, present time perspective, future time perspective, flexibility, linearity, scarcity, and urgency—and proposes how three communication structures central to organizational work—coordination methods, workplace technologies, and feedback cycles—contribute to members’ temporal experience. The model incorporates the complex interplay among cultural, environmental, and individual factors as well. Testable propositions intended to guide future research are offered.

Optimism, Satisfaction and Time Perspective in the Elderly

In contrast to younger groups, research with the elderly suggest a predominantly present-focused temporal orientation. One aspect of satisfaction, optimism is conceptualized as a form of future perspective. Health psychology generally asserts that health-enhancing messages depend for effect on a person perceiving future benefits to actions taken in the present to enhance health or minimize ill-health risk. The extent to which the elderly perceive or value the future should impact on health maintenance behaviors. In a study of eighty-six elderly people, the dominant ways of viewing time coalesced around a variety of present time perspectives. Within-group differences revealed that as people aged, they became less satisfied with life relative to their level of optimism. For the young-old, optimism was positively correlated with satisfaction, but for the oldest-old the variables were negatively associated. Optimism increased with age while satisfaction decreased with age. The decrease in satisfaction is most probably related more to a sense of realism about the tasks of aging than a sense of "death anxiety," or avoidance of the future. As people age, temporal variables become less important in predicting optimism or satisfaction and optimism becomes less important as a predictor of satisfaction. Implications for developing models of health management in the elderly are discussed.

Who's Smoking, Drinking, and Using Drugs? Time Perspective as a Predictor of Substance Use

Two studies examined whether those identified as having a more present time perspective (PTP) are more likely to report using alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. In Study 1, across 2,627 participants from 15 samples, we found that PTP, as assessed by the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, was related to more frequent self-reported alcohol, drug, and tobacco use (Substance Use scale: average r = .34, p <.001). Future time perspective (FTP) was negatively related to reported substance use (average r = -.16, p < .001), but the relation was weaker than that of PTP, suggesting that PTP and FTP are independent constructs. In Study 2, we found that PTP was a significant predictor of reported substance use even after controlling for many personality traits that have been related to increased substance use. These findings indicate that time perspective is an important individual difference construct that should be considered when examining health-related behaviors, such as substance use and abuse, and in planning intervention programs.

Who's Smoking, Drinking, and Using Drugs? Time Perspective as a Predictor of Substance Use

Two studies examined whether those identified as having a more present time perspective (PTP) are more likely to report using alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. In Study 1, across 2,627 participants from 15 samples, we found that PTP, as assessed by the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, was related to more frequent self-reported alcohol, drug, and tobacco use (Substance Use scale: average r = .34, p <.001). Future time perspective (FTP) was negatively related to reported substance use (average r = -.16, p < .001), but the relation was weaker than that of PTP, suggesting that PTP and FTP are independent constructs. In Study 2, we found that PTP was a significant predictor of reported substance use even after controlling for many personality traits that have been related to increased substance use. These findings indicate that time perspective is an important individual difference construct that should be considered when examining health-related behaviors, such as substance use and abuse, and in planning intervention programs.

Present time perspective as a predictor of risky driving

This research introduces a new individual difference variable, time perspective, as an important predictor of risky driving. Across three separate replications, with 2863 participants, present time perspective is significantly correlated with reported risky driving behaviors. Its effect is greater than, and independent of, the negative correlations between future time perspective and risky driving. Additionally, males are more present-oriented and report taking more risks than females, while females are more future-oriented. Regression analyses and discriminate validity assessments demonstrate that present time perspective remains an independent predictor of risky driving even when pitted against nine other measures previously reported as related to driving risk, such as, sensation seeking, impulsivity, and aggression. Although complicated by the number of factors potentially involved, it is imperative to attempt to predict such risk because of the enormous economic and psychological toll resulting from auto accidents and fatalities related to risky driving. Discussion centers on implications for education based on understanding the psychological dynamics of time perspective and links to general risk-taking and self-regulation.

Present versus future time perspective and HIV risk among heterosexual college students.

Because safer sex behaviors require planning and forethought and their primary motivations lie in the future, the hypothesis that behaviors that might reduce exposure to HIV would positively correlate with future time orientation, whereas risky behaviors would correlate with present time orientation, was tested in a survey of 188 heterosexual college students. As expected, those high in future time orientation were less likely to be sexually experienced and had fewer sexual partners. In contrast, present time orientation positively related to those measures. Those high in future orientation were more likely to use alternate methods of reducing exposure to HIV (e.g., inquiring about partner's sexual history, delaying or abstaining from sex). Time perspective also interacted with both gender and fear of AIDS. The responses of women and individuals low in fear were more related to time orientation.

Present versus future time perspective and HIV risk among heterosexual college students.

Present versus future time perspective and HIV risk among heterosexual college students.

Future time perspective and daily occupations of persons with chronic schizophrenia in a board and care home.

An ethnographic approach was used to study the relationship between temporal perspective in persons with chronic schizophrenia and their ability to function in chosen occupations and participate in the routines of a board and care home. Components of future time perspective (extension, coherence, and density) are associated with the ability to organize and implement goal-directed activities. The study focused on how future time perspective occurs in a board and care home, with particular emphasis on how the institution influences temporality. Participant observation and interviewing were used to gather data on 10 subjects. The pervasive influence of the facility's institutional rules and expectations is revealed in the findings of subjects' present time orientation and limited future time perspective. An examination of the fit between the demands of available roles within one's environment and occupations is proposed.

Time Preference for Health in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

In program evaluation, should a predicted health status gain of 1 quality-adjusted life year (QALY) occurring 10 years from now be valued the same as a 1-QALY increase realizable 5 years from now? Or 1 year from now? If not, how should these future gains (or losses) be evaluated from a present-time perspective? Such questions arise frequently in cost-effectiveness analyses of disease prevention-health promotion programs. This report argues there are actually two distinct interpretations of time preference jointly relevant in many multiperiod program evaluations. 1) In ongoing programs where both present and future population cohorts are, in effect, vying for resources, decision makers must establish a relative social weighting of cohorts by specifying (now) the dollar worth of any unit QALY gain achievable in each. This is a problem of intergenerational equity in the resource allocation process. 2) Individuals, in any cohort, may possess a time preference for the sequence of events comprising their own multiperiod health outcomes. Current models, typically discounting future health gains to present value at some constant rate (r), can well accommodate the first interpretation but not (simultaneously) the second. In response, this report introduces a two-step evaluation procedure featuring the "scenario strategy," a holistic multiattribute preference approach to evaluating multiperiod health outcomes. It allows one to isolate statistically time preference effects at the individual or group level and to incorporate them naturally into the overall evaluation of multiperiod outcomes. A survey-based example and an appendix illustrate the main points.

Traditionalism in a Modern Setting: A Comparison of Anglo- and Mexican-American Value Orientations

Charles R . Chandler is Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas Tech University. The research reported in this paper was funded by the Ethnic Studies Institute of Texas Tech. The author wishes to thank the Institute and the interviewers who worked on the project. Of the latter, a special thanks is due to Eligio Vega, Marian Meriwether, and Emily LaBeff. 0 NE OF THE MASTER THEMES in social science for the past two hundred years has been the transformation of individuals and societies from to modern. Although differing in terminology and emphasis, practically every major writer on human society has been concerned with this change, and most conceptualized the transition in terms of ideal typical dichotomization or at least a continuum between extreme societal forms or traits. Lerner (1968:387), in reviewing this body of work, presents one of the many lists that have been developed to define the meaning of modernity. Along with economic growth, public participation in the polity, and increments in mobility, Lerner includes diffusion of secular-rational norms and change in modal personality that equips individuals to function effectively in a [modern] social order (Lerner 1968:387). Concern with such cultural and psychological components of modernization has led to development of survey instruments for measuring (Kluckhohn 1951:409); Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961; Kahl 1965, 1968) and individual modernity (Inkeles 1969; Inkeles and Smith 1974). A basic idea in these writings is that modern industrial-urbanbureaucratic social structure requires for its successful operation individuals who have internalized values, norms, and beliefs compatible with such a structure. It follows that individuals who adhere to traditional viewpoints will experience difficulties in understanding, adjusting to, or changing already established societal arrangements of the modern type. It is precisely in such a situation that, according to many writers, some segments of the Mexican-American population find themselves. Since Parsons (1951: 198-200) first described Spanish Americans as being characterized by particularistic-ascriptive orientations, as opposed to the universalistic-achievement pattern of the dominant Anglo Americans, controversy has continued over whether some of the difficulties encountered by Mexican and Spanish Americans are attributable to their adherence to value positions incongruent with modern society. Field studies conducted in Texas and New Mexico expanded upon Parson's comments and seemed to provide convincing evidence that, at least in come communities, Mexican and Spanish Americans clung to values characterized by fatalism, low achievement drives, past and present time perspectives, close integration with the extended family, and inability to operate effectively in secondary groups (see Romano 1960; Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961; Madsen 1964; Rube1 1966). Anglos were described in opposite terms, their orientations being toward active mastery of the world, high achievement, future time, and weak commitments to family of orientation accompanied by trust in strangers and facility in secondary relations. The latter are some of the value orientations considered most appropriate to life in modern socie-