The Julio Blog

American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo(famous for the 1971 Stanford prison experiment) gave a Ted Talk about the psychology of time. The psychology of time can be summed into time perspectives, past, present, and future, which we use to make decisions.

People who focus solely in the past take into great consideration their previous experiences. These past-thinking people can be split into “past negatives” and “past positives”. Negatives and positives depending on whether they constantly remember pleasant experiences or negatives ones.

Present focused people think about what they can get out of the decision in the situation or stimulation. These people can further split by being “Present Hedonistic” or “Present Fatalistic”. The former being people focus on the joys of life and the latter means believing our lives are controlled by fate and we have no control over decisions anyway.

Finally, future-oriented people tend to focus on what will be and any anticipated consequences. They tend to think further into the future moment. These again can be split into “Goal-Oriented” or “Transcendental” people. Goal-oriented folks focus on achievement. Transcendental focuses on how the decisions will affect them during their life after death.

Extracting from the six time-perspectives, there is a combination that he learned to predict the success of people in life. But some perspectives should take precedence over others. for example, too much future and goal-oriented can sacrifice family time or health. Too much present hedonism and the person living for pleasure can find themselves living a harder life. And too much past positive can result in sitting in a chair reminiscing about the “good old times” (like peaking in high school).

Zimbardo found the optimal time bias profile for successful decision making was:

• HIGH in Past-Positive Experiences. This gives you roots to connect with identity & family – to be grounded and anchored.
• MODERATE HIGH in Future Goal-Oriented. This gives you wings to soar to new destinations and challenges.
• MODERATE in Present-Hedonism. This gives you energy to explore people, places, self- & sensuality.

He also mentions we should be aware to keep two specific perspective of time LOW when making decisions.

• LOW in Past-Negative, using bad experiences.
• LOW in Present-Fatalism, using “it doesn’t matter” mentality.

Zimbardo mentions using these time perspectives to create social change in, “the drop-out rates of school kids, combating addictions, enhancing teen health”, and more.

As for you and I, this gives us another reason to nail down what our values are, what goals we have set, and know what gives us energy.

Next time you find yourself dragging your feet to make a decision(or to follow through with one you made), think about how you can leverage these to do make the next day even better.