Empirical evidence for assumptions underlying time orientation in undergraduates

282 undergraduate students between 17 and 68 years of age were asked to list the 5 most significant experiences of their lives, to assign the time zones to these experiences, and to provide estimates of emotional valence corresponding to each significant life experience they listed. Subjects also provided judgements of time perspective on a Life Line. The sample showed a near-past orientation and a positive emotional valence across the experiences reported. However, the first experiences reported were distant past experiences significantly more frequently than expected by chance, while the last experiences in the Experiential Inventory were significantly more often located in the distant future. While this result validates the prevailing assumption of a unidirectional flow of past to future, empirical evidence was also found for the larger magnitude and variability of future as compared with past perspective. This suggests a bidirectional model of time should be invoked to explain the differing character of the opponent temporal processes of recall and anticipation in human experience.