Temporal Extension and Orientation: A Methodological Study

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Abstract
Research on temporal extension and orientation has produced a mass of conflicting findings. It was felt that differences in the operational definition of the dimensions might account for the contradictory findings. Ten tests, representative of different measurement techniques, were administered to 210 college students. Correlations of the following demographic factors with the test variables were non-significant or trivial: sex, social class, birth order, verbal intelligence, and rural/urban origin. The factor analyzed data showed that the tests clustered according to the three broad temporal dimensions and according to instrument-related characteristics. It was concluded that three types of stimulus attributes are crucial to the interpretation of research findings on extension and orientation—breadth of the temporal perspective, temporal anchoring, and affective loading of the items. It will be necessary to re-evaluate the research literature on temporal perspective in the light of these test-related differences. Question is raised as to whether temporal perspectives are quantifiable in the simplistic sense of the previous research in this field. Content characteristics must be considered in conjunction with the numerical indices.

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