Tag: future-oriented

Self-Esteem & Future Time Perspective: How One’s Orientation Affects Their Sense of Self

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When you look to the future, what do you see?

Are you positive about it? Negative? Confused? Certain?

And how does this predict your level of self-esteem?

That’s what one study by Southwest University and Ohio University set out to determine by examining Chinese and American college students and their feelings about the future.

Future & Past Time Perspective

We’ve talked about time orientation in past posts.

Americans generally have a future time perspective, while the Chinese favor a past time perspective.

Future time perspective involves goal-setting and forward-thinking. 

Future-oriented cultures are progressive and look toward – you guessed it – the future.

They try to see the big picture.

They plan and are driven by aims and goals.

Past-oriented cultures are conservative and risk-averse. 

They look at the past and present as interchangeable.

The past is revered and directs the future. 

Tradition is important, as are family values.

As you can see, each culture views time – and the future – very differently.

The Study

Using the FTP Scale (Future Time Perspective) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, 340 American undergrads and 460 Chinese undergrads were tested.

The study found that the American undergrads were more negative and confused about the future, as well as more positive, perspicuous, and perseverant about it.

American students also exhibited higher self-esteem than their Chinese counterparts.

What do these results mean?

The study has some answers.

Results Analysis

Why are young Americans more pessimistic about the future than their Chinese counterparts?

The study suggests that ever since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. GDP has suffered, while China, as a developing nation, has a higher growth rate.

These socioeconomic factors may impact both groups’ levels of pessimism.

As for the Americans’ higher levels of optimism, this could be due to an innate belief in the economic development and national trends of the country.

American individualism may also impact the undergrads’ level of confusion about the future.

Those from individualist cultures more often believe that the future is in their hands. This makes for both isolation and uncertainty.

Those from collectivist cultures have a social safety net.

Their future is also viewed from a collective perspective (parents, friends, teachers, etc.), so this group involvement may reduce feelings of uncertainty for Chinese undergrads.

Self-Esteem

In both the American and Chinese groups, self-esteem was linked to future-negative or future-positive sub scale scores.

Those who had a positive view of the future had higher self-esteem, while those with a negative view of the future had lower self-esteem.

Similarly, those confused about the future had lower self-esteem, while those perspicuous about the future had higher self-esteem.

The higher degrees of optimism and perspicuity about the future in the American group led to a higher average level of self-esteem overall.

Cultural Time Orientation: How Future-Oriented Cultures View Time

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Say, you’re headed to a job interview in the U.S.

You’ve probably prepared for this common question: “Where do you see yourself in 5/10 years?”

This is a perfect example of how Americans – and other future-oriented cultures – view time.

Their focus is on future goals.

What can they accomplish in the present to meet these goals?

How can they benefit in the future from their actions today?

We’ve talked about past-oriented cultures and present-oriented cultures.

If you find yourself most often viewing life in terms of what is to come, you might be from a future-oriented culture.

Future-Oriented Values

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Future-oriented cultures view life and priorities in terms of long-term goals.

Their values are based on goal-setting and achieving.

In a large-scale study of culture and leadership, the GLOBE project defined future-oriented cultures as those that value “the sacrifice of short-term pleasures and satisfactions in favor of long-term success and prosperity.” 

As you can imagine, such goal-oriented cultures are often competitive and confident, as they have an idea of what they want.

Think, “the American Dream.” 

Sacrificing today means a more promising tomorrow.

Such cultures are grounded in optimism, seeking a better future for themselves and working toward that “dream.”

They value planning and investing.

The study also found that future-oriented cultures – like the U.S., Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Malaysia – often have a higher GDP per capita, as their forward-thinking values help them see the big-picture.

The Future is Ours

“Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.” – Nikola Tesla

To differentiate between past, present, and future orientation, consider a pipeline potentially being constructed over sacred land.

A past-oriented culture might view the grounds as sacrosanct.

From their perspective, the land should be respected, and the people’s historical use and ownership of these grounds, honored.

A present-oriented culture might primarily value the jobs that this pipeline will provide today – jobs in a region that desperately needs them.

A future-oriented culture might look at the long-term effects of this pipeline. 

What would the benefits of its construction be? The drawbacks and the costs? To what extent would the pipeline impact the environment and the bottom line?

The point is, a culture’s time perception dictates its values.

Cultural time orientation will influence thinking, rationale, and the choices one will make in business and personal matters.

4 Types of Cultural Time Orientation & Time Perception

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The ways in which individuals in a culture work and how they view time frames are dictated by whether a culture runs according to a polychronic time system or a monochronic time system.

We talked last week about cultures with informal concepts of time, including cultures that view time as exclusively present (not past or future) and those who view time as cyclical.

How is this time-orientation learned? Let’s take a look.

Values & Norms

Just as values and norms are a culture’s learned behaviors, so is time perception.

Time perception is based on a society’s values. As we mentioned in an earlier post, those from monochronic cultures value relationships above all else. So, if they miss a deadline in lieu of putting time into a family matter, it’s a nonissue.

So, just as children learn values – such as the importance of family – during their primary socialization, so they are oriented toward a specific time cognitivism based on those values.

Time Orientation

There are four different types of time orientation.

These are:

  • Past – the past and the present are interchangeable in past-oriented cultures. They often do not fully grasp elapsed time.
  • Time-line – this type of time cognitivity is a detail-oriented linear concept of time. However, time-line cognitivity does not lend itself to multitasking.
  • Present – you might think of a thrill-seeker when you think of present-oriented cognitivity. These are low-risk aversion cultures.
  • Future – the goal-setting, forward-thinking cultures are future-oriented. Those with future-oriented cognitivity look at the bigger picture and follow their plans through to achieve that picture.

What is affected by time orientation?

Communication, particularly the content of what’s being communicated, as well as the urgency and frequency of communication.

Who Belongs Where

Older countries with centuries of history, such as India and China, are generally past-oriented. The broad scope of time in these cultures enables a view of time that judges minutes and hours as inconsequential.

Forget the stampede and the rush to meet goals. The clock doesn’t rule such cultures – or, in fact, industry or infrastructure in such cultures. A train in India will be late, and few will bother. Late trains and missed deadlines are to be expected.

Cultures who live for today, like France, are considered present-oriented. Their values are more often thrill-seeking and pleasure-based, rather than with a view on the future or the past.

Newer countries with an eye on innovation and the future, like the US, are future-oriented. The “American Dream,” for instance, is a quintessential thread in the country’s cultural fabric.

A dream is an ideal to work toward; hence, it’s always in the future. Milestones are often set to achieve this ideal. And the clock is ticking. This leads to a culture working against the clock.

Time orientation combined with a culture’s values dictate much about the way individuals in said societies live their lives.

We’ll talk about how monochronism and polychronism falls into time orientation next week.