Philip Zimbardo: The Time Paradox

In this video The Time Paradox, at FORA.tv, psychologist Philip Zimbardo offers an interesting account of subjective or psychological time. Namely, he considers that we have a select few frameworks of time reference:

1.) past time perspective - postie
2.) past time perspective - negative
3.) present time perspective - hedonism
4.) present time perspective - fatalism
5.) future time perspective - life-goal oriented
6.) future time perspective - transcendental
[#7.) holistic expansive present, based on experience of now (zen)]

After looking into the classic child psychological experiment with marshmallows concerning certain the ability of children to delay gratification. He then goes on the explain how early tendancies have important consequences in terms of how adults behave. These time perspectives, he argues, have dramatic consequences for how we live our lives and how we can learn to function effectively in multiple time perspective frameworks.