I learned just how important time orientation is to everyday decisions we make. The pace of life affects everything from how helpful we are to how likely we are to get a heart attack. The authors of the book did this one experiment with seminary students at Standford. The students were split into 2 groups and both groups were told they had to give a speech about the Good Samaritan across campus. Then the authors told one group that they were late for their speech, while telling the other group they could make the speech easily. Along the way in plain sight the authors placed a man coughing up blood to see how many students from each group would help him out. These were seminary students who presumably were devoting their whole life to god and doing Good. Ninety percent of students in the group that had enough time stopped to help the mat out where as only 15 percent of those who thought they were late. The students themselves were surprised by the results. This relates to the pace of life thing I mentioned earlier cities with a higher pace of life are a lot less helpful and more likely to people suffering from heart attacks. I could measure the pace of life in Brookline maybe. Then measure the helpfulness of the people in Brookline if I am still doing the psych profile thing. Your life and all those small decisions are impacted by your smaller scale time perspective. It’s like that great Ferris Bueller quote, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
There is also a larger scale time perspective in the book that one can take test in the book to figure out and it is pretty awesome. However it seems kind of irrelevant to the project. There is a bunch or awesome stuff about how people’s current perspectives alter their memories and how one should not be past negative and it all in the attitude. I spent like a couple of hours last week giving myself a more positive outlook on life and not harping of the negative.
Here's another experiment you might try: Pull up to a red light (or, if you don't drive, do this in a friend's car). When the light turns green, just wait. See how long it takes before someone starts to beep. Do this several times and then drive out to a suburb and see what happens when you do this.
ReplyDeleteI heard that someone did this in Minnesota and the light went through two cycles before someone beeped. In NYC, it's about 1 second, max. This gives you a clear sense of how people think about time.
I'm getting more intrigued the more I hear about this topic. You might also pay attention to the metaphors that people use when talking about time: spending time, wasting time, buying time, on time, time out, etc. This, too, gives you a sense of how people think about time.
Keep reading this book if it's captured your attention. Sounds great so far.
15/15