Individual differences in the interpretation of ambiguous statements about time

Abstract

What factors influence the ways in which people resolve ambiguity? In English, two contrasting perspectives are implicit in deictic temporal expressions: the Moving Time metaphor conceptualizes time as moving forward towards the ego and the Moving Ego metaphor conceptualizes the ego as moving forward towards the future (Clark 1973). We examine the ambiguity arising from these two conceptualizations, claimed to be equally likely in a “neutral” context (Boroditsky and Ramscar 2002). Whereas previous studies have demonstrated that exposure to a spatial situation related to one interpretation may influence the resolution of the ambiguity (e.g. Boroditsky 2000; Nunez 2007), we focus on the lifestyle and personality factors of the participants as potential additional influences on ambiguity resolution in the interpretation of temporal metaphors. Experiment 1 asks whether lifestyle might influence an individual's approach to time and resulting resolution of temporal ambiguity, comparing preferred responses from two groups of participants with very different demands on the structuring of time: university students and administrators. We observed a difference between the two groups, with administrators more frequently adopting the Moving Time perspective and students, the Moving Ego perspective. Experiment 2 examines personality-related differences, focusing specifically on individual differences in procrastination (Lay 1986) and conscientiousness (John 1990). We observed a significant effect with participants who adopted the Moving Ego perspective reporting higher procrastination scores and lower conscientiousness scores than participants who adopted the Moving Time perspective. Experiment 3 investigates further personality-related differences, focusing specifically on individual differences in extroversion (John 1990). We observed a relationship between extroversion and disambiguation responses, with participants who adopted the Moving Ego perspective evidencing higher levels of extroversion. Taken together, the results from these three studies suggest that individual differences in lifestyle and personality may influence people's perspectives on the movement of events in time and their concomitant interpretation of temporally ambiguous utterances, precluding a universal “neutral” context within which language is interpreted.

Moving Through Time: The Role of Personality in Three Real‐Life Contexts

“…Taken together, these findings suggest a way to extend Duffy and Feist's () results using a measure of real‐life behavior: we hypothesized that there would be differences in temporal reasoning between people who are on time for work and those who are not. To test this, in , we interviewed people at a bus station who were en route to work.…”

“…More recently, Duffy and Feist () investigated whether individual differences in conscientiousness (John, ) and procrastination (Lay, ) would contribute to a person's view of time and, hence, to their interpretation of the ambiguous Wednesday's meeting question. Personality research shows that in contrast to procrastinators, who tend to defer or postpone action (Milgram, Mey‐Tal, & Levison, ; Milgram & Tenne, ), conscientious individuals tend to prioritize action (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, ; John & Srivastava, ).…”

“…In other words, procrastination involves the movement of tasks “forward” into the future, in a direction defined by the ego's movement through time (in line with the Moving Ego perspective) while conscientiousness involves the movement of tasks “forward” toward the present, ergo toward the ego (in line with the Moving Time perspective) . Thus, Duffy and Feist () hypothesized that the habitual movement of tasks may be a contributor to the temporal perspective adopted in response to the Wednesday's meeting question, with procrastinators favoring the Moving Ego perspective, and conscientious individuals favoring the Moving Time perspective. To test these predictions, they had participants complete a questionnaire for measuring trait conscientiousness (John, ) and trait procrastination (Lay, ).…”

“…While recent research has provided initial evidence that individual personality differences that may be conceptualized spatially may also influence an individual's approach to time and resulting resolution of temporal ambiguity, all of these studies have relied on participants' self‐reports regarding personality traits, leaving open the question of whether these relationships have force in real life. To address this question, three experiments examined the resolution of temporal ambiguity, using as our impetus Duffy and Feist's () investigation of conscientiousness and procrastination in relation to temporal perspective. Thus, the current study compares the resolution of temporal ambiguity to the timeliness of workers traveling to work, that is, if they were early, on time, or late (), to the timeliness of students submitting an essay (), and to the time of arrival for a scheduled appointment ().…”

Temporal frames of reference and the locative case marking of the Finnish adposition ete- ‘in front of / ahead’

“…] Filipovic and Jaszczolt, 2012a,b; for psycholinguistic studies, Boroditsky, 2000;Boroditsky et al, 2011;Matlock et al, 2005Matlock et al, , 2011Duffy and Feist, 2014 and references mentioned in these works). Temporal FoRs are metaphorical counterparts of spatial FoRs that represent spatial projective relations where the location of one participant (the Figure) is expressed in relation to another participant (the Ground; for the terms Figure and Ground, see Talmy, 2000: Ch5) by applying a three-dimensional system of axes (see Levinson, 2003).…”