The social psychology of time.

The purpose of the two experiments was to study orientation to the passage of time. In experiment I, intellectual judgments were made by 607 subjects on the importance of the different time divisions, all of which were compared with one another. The present was regarded as 1.2 times as important as the future, and 12.7 times as important as the past. In experiment II, it was found that the past is hardly important in the emotional time behavior of the subjects: while only 13% worry much about their own past misfortunes, 94.5% are hopeful about their own future; 67.4% worry about present problems, 56.3% daydream about things that are going to happen, and 89.3% often shape their plans in advance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)