Alden E. Wessman

The Personal experience of time

1 The Emergence of Human Awareness and Concepts of Time.- 2 Toward a Dialectical Interpretation of Time and Change.- 3 The Temporal Transition from Being Together to Being Alone: The Significance and Structure of Childrens Bedtime Stories.- 4 Perception and Concept of Time: A Developmental Perspective.- 5 The Time of Youth.- 6 Memories of Tomorrow: On the Interpenetrations of Time in Later Life.- 7 Images, Values, and Concepts of Time in Psychological Research.- 8 The Modern Consciousness and the Winged Chariot.

Personality and the Subjective Experience of Time

Summary A factor analysis of responses to a temporal experience questionnaire from 110 Ss, and related intensive personality assessment research with 17 of them, extracted four bipolar temporal experience factors and investigated their personality correlates. An Immediate Time Pressure factor (harassed lack of control vs. relaxed mastery and adaptive flexibility) was correlated with high emotionality and nervous tension, imaginative fantasy and self-absorption, and sensitivity. A Long-Term Personal Direction factor (continuity and steady purpose vs. discontinuity and lack of direction) correlated with happiness and elated mood levels, and self-esteem and identity. A Time Utilization factor (efficient scheduling vs. procrastination and inefficiency) correlated with precision and orderliness, and confidence and initiative. A Personal Inconsistency factor (inconsistency and changeability vs. consistency and dependability) correlated with affective lability and low repression, and impulsiveness.

Images, Values, and Concepts of Time in Psychological Research

Some years back we began an inquiry that sometimes proved rewarding, yet more often has filled us with dissatisfaction, uncertainty, and a tormenting sense of the many questions still to be asked and answered. Our quest was one that has lured many others throughout the ages, namely, a search to understand the meaning of time and its relationships to other aspects of behavior and experience.

Moods: Their Personal Dynamics and Significance

Wessman presents a summary of the literature on moods and discusses in detail much of the work that he and his colleagues have been doing in this area for more than a decade. Wessman draws no sharp distinctions between the qualitative characteristics of mood and emotion. In some respects, mood can be considered an emotion of extended duration. Perhaps because of this temporal characteristic, people are often less aware of the causes of mood than they are of a more specific, intense, and temporally restricted emotion experience. Wessman talks about separate and distinct emotions and moods and sees these phenomena as important motivational conditions.

The Emergence of Human Awareness and Concepts of Time

We all know intimately the passage of time. Life is transitory: hours fly by, days merge into years. Our personal experience seems always located in time. “Now” possesses an immediate presence and reality that past and future lack. But memories endure, often repossessing us with vivid detail and feeling. And hopes and fears can transform the present with images of beckoning paradises or ominous hells. While ever in the present, our awareness and imagination transcend it. Yet we know we are not the masters of time; rather it restricts and coerces us. Though awareness and conceptions of time are products of the human mind, time itself seems to possess an existence apart, its passage impersonal and inexorable. As an old Italian proverb put it, “Man measures time and time measures man.” This intimate and personal, yet aloof and detached character constitutes the paradox of human time.

Linear representation of temporal location and Stevens’s law

Ss were asked to indicate points 1 week, 7 months, 3 years, and 9 years in the past and future on two time lines representing birth to present and present to death. Data for 90 college-age Ss fit a psychophysical power function following Stevens’s law. with negatively accelerated growth indicating proportionately greater linear representation of periods nearer to the present. Variability was greater for the representations of the future than of the past, with monotonic increases in variability as distance from the present increased.

The Relationship Between Locus of Control and Temporal Experience.

As locus of control involves generalized expectancies regarding the determination of events, it should relate to temporal attitudes and experiences. Correlational data from 89 subjects on the Rotter-Mirels Locus of Control and Ricks-Epley-Wessman Temporal Experience Questionnaire scales supported the hypothesis that the reported time experiences and orientations of external control subjects would be significantly more harassed and pressured, ciscontinuous and undirected, procrastinating and inefficient, and inconsistent and changeable than those of internal control subjects. Discussion forcuses on the self-defeating cycle of disorganization and victimization experienced by individuals with an external locus of control.