Does the language you speak affect how you think about the world? This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently—English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical. This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way …
Tag Archives: Time
Roberts, W. A. (2002). Are animals stuck in time? Psychological Bulletin, 128(3), 473-489.
People can time travel cognitively because they can remember events having occurred at particular times in the past (episodic memory) and because they can anticipate new events occurring at particular times in the future. The ability to assign points in time to events arises from human development of a sense of time and its accompanying …
Whillans, A. V., Dunn, E. W., Smeets, P., Bekkers, R., &Norton, M. I. (2017). Buying time promotes happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201706541.
Around the world, increases in wealth have produced an unintended consequence: a rising sense of time scarcity. We provide evidence that using money to buy time can provide a buffer against this time famine, thereby promoting happiness. Using large, diverse samples from the United States, Canada, Denmark, and The Netherlands (n = 6,271), we show …
Hershfield, H. E., Mogilner, C., &Barnea, U. (2016). People who choose time over money are happier. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(7), 697-706.
Money and time are both scarce resources that people believe would bring them greater happiness. But would people prefer having more money or more time? And how does one’s preference between resources relate to happiness? Across studies, we asked thousands of Americans whether they would prefer more money or more time. Although the majority of …
Kasser, T., &Sheldon, K. M. (2009). Time affluence as a path toward personal happiness and ethical business practice: Empirical evidence from four studies. Journal of Business Ethics, 84(2), 243-255.
Many business practices focus on maximizing material affluence, or wealth, despite the fact that a growing empirical literature casts doubt on whether money can buy happiness. We therefore propose that businesses consider the possibility of “time affluence” as an alternative model for improving employee well-being and ethical business practice. Across four studies, results consistently showed …
DeVoe, S. E., &Pfeffer, J. (2011). Time is tight: How higher economic value of time increases feelings of time pressure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(4), 665-676.
The common heuristic association between scarcity and value implies that more valuable things appear scarcer (King, Hicks, & Abdelkhalik, 2009), an effect we show applies to time as well. In a series of studies, we found that both income and wealth, which affect the economic value of time, influence perceived time pressure. Study 1 found …
Mogilner, C., &Aaker, J. (2009). “The time vs. money effect”: Shifting product attitudes and decisions through personal connection. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(2), 277-291.
The results of five field and laboratory experiments reveal a “time versus money effect” whereby activating time (vs. money) leads to a favorable shift in product attitudes and decisions. Because time increases focus on product experience, activating time (vs. money) augments one’s personal connection with the product, thereby boosting attitudes and decisions. However, because money …
DeVoe, S. E., &House, J. (2012). Time, money, and happiness: How does putting a price on time affect our ability to smell the roses?
In this paper, we investigate how the impatience that results from placing a price on time impairs individuals’ ability to derive happiness from pleasurable experiences. Experiment 1 demonstrated that thinking about one’s income as an hourly wage reduced the happiness that participants derived from leisure time on the internet. Experiment 2 revealed that a similar …