Archive for the ‘Philip Zimbardo’ tag
How the Psychology of Time Can Help Channel Focus
How we focus on the passage of time can result in a significant bias when applied to everyday life. This bias could make all the difference in our relationships, our work, and our overall happiness. Philip Zimbardo, one of the most prestigious psychologists in the world and a part of the Positive Psychology movement, has recently turned his focus to time. His book, The Time Paradox, and his most recent online talks (#1, #2 – both recommended) have been all about time perspective and delayed gratification – or as he says, having a “healthy take on time”. Zimbardo holds a special place in my heart because he was the author of the textbook used in Psych 101 at Cornell University, which first piqued my interest in psychology. His new research on time fascinates me and in many ways speaks to what this blog is about.
Time perspective is about how we subjectively divide the flow of human experience into time zones or categories. We each create segments of reality through time using significant (or sometimes insignificant) events in our lives. Zimbardo calls this “subjective time” because it’s highly personal and unique to each of us. The way we approach time in general varies quite a bit and can easily become a bias as we’ll see.
The famous longitudinal marshmallow study, referenced in just about every positive psychology book these days, is a great example of how time orientation has an effect on who we are and what we do. If you haven’t heard about the study, it involved a group of 4-year olds who were given a marshmallow as a reward for completing a task. The kids were told that if they could hold off and not eat the marshmallow once left alone, they would receive another marshmallow. Of course, more kids than not couldn’t wait and ate the first marshmallow. They wanted instant gratification over delayed gratification, even though there would have been a better outcome through waiting.
When these kids graduated high school, they were interviewed by the researchers and there were significant differences across the board. The kids who were able to delay gratification and hold off eating the first marshmallow scored 250 points higher on the SAT and had far more positive personality traits than those who gave into the impulse. They were self-motivated, decisive, self-confident, and balanced. It pays to embrace delayed gratification.
If you’re interested, you can read more on the marshmallow study before going further.
