A Systematic Review Approach to Find Robust Items of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory

Construction and validation of a new Generational Time Perspective Questionnaire

The article presents a proposal for a new diagnostic tool-the Generational Time Perspective Questionnaire. The Generational Time Perspective was defined as a cognitive-affective representation of the future in relation to the lives of a generation of people that the current generation of people will not live to see. This definition was the starting point for the construction of the Generational Time Perspective Questionnaire. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicate a two-factor structure of the Generational Time Perspective Questionnaire. The first factor includes items about the cognitive representation of the future in the next generations. The second factor describes negative emotions towards the problems that humanity may face in future generations. The reliability of the particular dimensions of the questionnaire is satisfactory. The Generational Time Perspective Questionnaire correlates with other constructs that diagnose different aspects of an individual's temporality.

A cross-cultural examination of temporal orientation through everyday language on social media

Past research has shown that culture can form and shape our temporal orientation-the relative emphasis on the past, present, or future. However, there are mixed findings on how temporal orientations vary between North American and East Asian cultures due to the limitations of survey methodology and sampling. In this study, we applied an inductive approach and leveraged big data and natural language processing between two popular social media platforms-Twitter and Weibo-to assess the similarities and differences in temporal orientation in the United States of America and China, respectively. We first established predictive models from annotation data and used them to classify a larger set of English Twitter sentences (NTW = 1,549,136) and a larger set of Chinese Weibo sentences (NWB = 95,181) into four temporal catetories-past, future, atemporal present, and temporal present. Results show that there is no significant difference between Twitter and Weibo on past or future orientations; the large temporal orientation difference between North Americans and Chinese derives from their different prevailing focus on atemporal (e.g., facts, ideas) present (Twitter) or temporal present (e.g., the "here" and "now") (Weibo). Our findings contribute to the debate on cultural differences in temporal orientations with new perspectives following a new methodological approach. The study's implications call for a reevaluation of how temporal orientation is measured in cross-cultural studies, emphasizing the use of large-scale language data and acknowledging the atemporal present category. Understanding temporal orientations can guide effective cross-cultural communication strategies to tailor approaches for different audience based on temporal orientations, enhancing intercultural understanding and engagement.

The Italian Validation of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory and Its Comparison with Three Time Perspective Inventories

The Zimbardo time perspective inventory (ZTPI) is the most well-known and widely used measure of time perspective. However, the assessment of the psychometric properties of the ZTPI reveals several problems, and various short versions have been proposed to overcome these problems. In a large Italian sample (N = 2295; 1326 women; age range 18-74 years), the present study aimed to test a short version of the ZTPI (ZTPI-16) defined by high frequency items (i.e., "good" items), reviewing the items composition of previous alternative short versions of the scale. Beyond the assessment of the factorial structure of this new short ZTPI, we compared the ZTPI-16 to the original ZTPI (ZTPI-56) and another already validated version of the ZTPI in the Italian context, such as Zimbardo's Stanford time perspective inventory (ZTPI-22), the short version of the ZTPI (ZTPI-30), and the ZTPI-36 proposed analyzing the data from 24 countries. The results confirmed the psychometric problems of the ZTPI-56, whereas the ZTPI-16 reported adequate structural validity and reliability. Moderate-to-strong correlations between same temporal subscales in different ZTPI versions were also found. These data suggest that the review of the "good" items is a new direction in the development of ZTPI versions with good psychometric properties and comparable data among cultures.

A pilot study of how the past, present, and future are represented in three-dimensional space

Numerous studies have shown that the representation of temporal concepts is associated with spatial features such as position and size. In a conventional task called the "Circle Test (CT)," participants are asked to express the relative importance of the past, present, and future and to demonstrate relationships among them by drawing three circles representing the past, present, and future. Studies on various participants, including refugees, patients living with serious illnesses, and adolescents, have used it to understand the temporal perspectives of different test takers. On the other hand, several studies have suggested that concepts of time are represented in three-dimensional (3D) space. It is expected that temporal concepts of the past, present, and future could be recorded using a 3D drawing task. Here we created a 3D version of CT (the "Sphere Test [ST]") to investigate the sagittal representation of time and to record the relative time importance and relatedness, allowing for the shielding relationships and the laws of perspective. We conducted experiments with university students to compare the results from the CT and the ST. Our results suggested that not all on-screen overlapping can be interpreted as representing a connection between two time zones in 3D space. We also found correlations between the chosen sizes of the three circles in the CT and ST, i.e., the on-screen sizes of the past and present circles were positively correlated. In contrast, we observed no correlation between the on-screen sizes of the future circles in the two tests. The alignment pattern along the sagittal axis showed different patterns from the horizontal and vertical axes. In conclusion, this study sheds new light on the third dimension of the spatial representation of time and may help us understand the relationship between temporal perspectives and other factors, including mental health.

Relationship between Decision-Making, Time Perspective and Stress

Decision-making is a process of gathering information, organizing, and making appropriate choices. Time perspective refers to the ways one perceives the past, present, and future. Every decision-making style dwells in one of these temporal orientations. Within the process of decision-making, there is likely to be some degree of stress. The current study explores the association between Decision-Making Styles, Time Perspective, and Stress among college students (n = 120). Tools used were the General Decision-Making Style (GDMS), the short version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI-short), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Results showed a significant association between decision-making styles, time perspective, and stress. Further, decision-making was found to be influenced by temporal orientations and stress levels. Furthermore, this article also proposes to discuss the application value of decision-making in the process of addressing the challenges associated with career and other real-life decisions.