Background

Part of this website is dedicated to the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. Let me explain that. Philip Zimbardo is a world renowned social psychologist with a long list of influential achievements. Most psychologists (and law students) have been taught about the Stanford Prison experiment. Zimbardo recently wrote an excellent book on this subject in current history, for instance the Abu Ghraib prison abuses.

Others might know Zimbardo's work on shyness, maybe less influential and spectacular, but in my opinion his work on shyness and shame actually added some significant theoretical foundation. Read more about it here.

As a former Stanford professor, and president of the American Psychological Association, Philip Zimbardo wrote and taught about Time Perspective, and he still publishes. His still works on his theory of Time Perspective, or time orientation (see the WIKI page on definitions).

Time Perspective theory

Zimbardo & Boyd (1999) consider time perspective to be ‘the often unconscious process whereby the continual flows of personal and social experiences are assigned to temporal categories, or time frames, that help to give order, coherence, and meaning to those events.’ So time perspective and time orientation describe a personal tendency to have our behaviour influenced by how we relate to past, present, and imaginary future events. Time perspective refers to the way we relate our experiences to our personal time line, our personal history. Zimbardo calls them cognitive frames, that connect abstract, psychological constructions of the past and anticipated future events, through concrete representations of the present. These cognitive frames play an important role in everyday life, for they may emphasize a particular temporal frame (past, present, future). We give meaning to experiences through the way we link them to our personal history. “When chronically elicited, this bias becomes a dispositional style and predictive of how an individual will respond across a host of daily life choices.”

As Boyd & Zimbardo (in Strathman & Joireman, 2005) state, we develop an individual relationship with time, where the continual flow of experiences is parcelled into temporal categories, or time frames. Those time frames give order, coherence, and meaning to our experiences. We overemphasize time frames and develop a cognitive temporal bias toward being primarily past, future, or present oriented. This bias can become a dispositional style.

According to Zimbardo (2002), there is an optimally balanced time perspective, which is one in which “the past, present and future components blend and flexibly engage, depending on a situation’s demands and our needs and values” (p.62). And “a future time perspective is correlated with many factors that are strongly or moderately associated with well-being, such as optimism, hope, internal locus of control, and more” (Boniwell & Zimbardo, 2004). Time is the medium through which the visualization or symbolization of a future outcome takes place, but means-ends thinking and future orientation are required to achieve these goals over a period of time.

The instrument: ZTPI

The ZTPI consists of five factors: Past-Negative, a generally negative, aversive view of the past. People are conservative and cautious, scared to change habits. The second scale, Present-Hedonistic, reflects a hedonistic, enjoyment, pleasure, risk taking “devil may care” attitude toward time and life. Seeking new sensations and thrill seeking. Life is about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The Future scale measures a general future orientation, planning for and achievement of future goals. Often at the expense of present enjoyment, delaying gratification, and avoiding time-wasting temptations. A downside is minimizing the need for social connections, not taking time for occasional self indulgence, not being grounded in a sense of community and cultural traditions. The component of Past-Positive reflects a warm, sentimental, positive attitude toward the past. Focussing on family, traditions, continuity of self over time, and a focus on history. The fifth factor Present-Fatalistic measures a fatalistic, helpless, and hopeless attitude toward the future and life. A belief that the future is predestined and uninfluenced by individual actions.