Temporality across the Life-Span

Abstract

In seven studies, 7300 U. S., 891 Iranian, 534 Indian, and 216 Ghanaese persons aged four to ninety-nine were interviewed regarding their consciousness. For U. S. nationals: (a) at any given moment, persons were most apt to be thinking about the present and least apt to be thinking about the past, (b) frequency of future-orientation declined while, (c) frequency of present-orientation inclined with age, (d) in “typical thought” persons generally thought further into the future (a few months) than into the past (a few weeks), but (e) regarding those things that persons often think about that have or are yet to occur, they thought further into the past (5 years) than into the future (a year), (f) frequency of future-orientation did not vary as a function of social class, while degree of claimed planfulness was greater among the higher social class, and (g) claimed planfulness was curvilinearily related to age, with those aged eighteen through thirty-nine scoring highest. There were cross-national differences.