| Recorded at | February 06, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Event | TED2009 |
| Duration (min:sec) | 06:11 |
| Video Type | TED Stage Talk |
| Words per minute | 220.75 very fast |
| Readability (FK) | 54.53 medium |
| Speaker | Philip Zimbardo |
| Country | United States of America |
| Occupation | psychologist |
| Description | American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment |
Official TED page for this talk
Synopsis
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives.
| 1 | 00:18 | I want to share with you some ideas about the secret power of time, in a very short time. | ||
| 2 | 00:25 | Video: All right, start the clock please. 30 seconds studio. | ||
| 3 | 00:28 | Keep it quiet please. Settle down. | ||
| 4 | 00:33 | It's about time. End sequence. Take one. 15 seconds studio. | ||
| 5 | 00:42 | 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two ... | ||
| 6 | 00:52 | Philip Zimbardo: Let's tune into the conversation of the principals in Adam's temptation. | ||
| 7 | 00:58 | "Come on Adam, don't be so wishy-washy. Take a bite." "I did." | ||
| 8 | 01:02 | "One bite, Adam. Don't abandon Eve." | ||
| 9 | 01:05 | "I don't know, guys. | ||
| 10 | 01:08 | I don't want to get in trouble." | ||
| 11 | 01:10 | "Okay. One bite. What the hell?" | ||
| 12 | 01:15 | (Laughter) Life is temptation. It's all about yielding, resisting, yes, no, now, later, impulsive, reflective, present focus and future focus. | ||
| 13 | 01:26 | Promised virtues fall prey to the passions of the moment. | ||
| 14 | 01:28 | Of teenage girls who pledged sexual abstinence and virginity until marriage -- thank you George Bush -- the majority, 60 percent, yielded to sexual temptations within one year. | ||
| 15 | 01:37 | And most of them did so without using birth control. | ||
| 16 | 01:40 | So much for promises. | ||
| 17 | 01:42 | Now lets tempt four-year-olds, giving them a treat. | ||
| 18 | 01:46 | They can have one marshmallow now. But if they wait until the experimenter comes back, they can have two. | ||
| 19 | 01:50 | Of course it pays, if you like marshmallows, to wait. | ||
| 20 | 01:53 | What happens is two-thirds of the kids give in to temptation. | ||
| 21 | 01:56 | They cannot wait. The others, of course, wait. | ||
| 22 | 01:59 | They resist the temptation. They delay the now for later. | ||
| 23 | 02:03 | Walter Mischel, my colleague at Stanford, went back 14 years later, to try to discover what was different about those kids. | ||
| 24 | 02:10 | There were enormous differences between kids who resisted and kids who yielded, in many ways. | ||
| 25 | 02:14 | The kids who resisted scored 250 points higher on the SAT. | ||
| 26 | 02:18 | That's enormous. That's like a whole set of different IQ points. | ||
| 27 | 02:22 | They didn't get in as much trouble. They were better students. | ||
| 28 | 02:25 | They were self-confident and determined. And the key for me today, the key for you, is, they were future-focused rather than present-focused. | ||
| 29 | 02:32 | So what is time perspective? That's what I'm going to talk about today. | ||
| 30 | 02:35 | Time perspective is the study of how individuals, all of us, divide the flow of your human experience into time zones or time categories. | ||
| 31 | 02:43 | And you do it automatically and non-consciously. | ||
| 32 | 02:45 | They vary between cultures, between nations, between individuals, between social classes, between education levels. | ||
| 33 | 02:51 | And the problem is that they can become biased, because you learn to over-use some of them and under-use the others. | ||
| 34 | 02:57 | What determines any decision you make? | ||
| 35 | 02:59 | You make a decision on which you're going to base an action. | ||
| 36 | 03:02 | For some people it's only about what is in the immediate situation, what other people are doing and what you're feeling. | ||
| 37 | 03:08 | And those people, when they make their decisions in that format -- we're going to call them "present-oriented," because their focus is what is now. | ||
| 38 | 03:15 | For others, the present is irrelevant. | ||
| 39 | 03:17 | It's always about "What is this situation like that I've experienced in the past?" | ||
| 40 | 03:20 | So that their decisions are based on past memories. | ||
| 41 | 03:23 | And we're going to call those people "past-oriented," because they focus on what was. | ||
| 42 | 03:27 | For others it's not the past, it's not the present, it's only about the future. | ||
| 43 | 03:31 | Their focus is always about anticipated consequences. | ||
| 44 | 03:33 | Cost-benefit analysis. | ||
| 45 | 03:36 | We're going to call them "future-oriented." Their focus is on what will be. | ||
| 46 | 03:39 | So, time paradox, I want to argue, the paradox of time perspective, is something that influences every decision you make, you're totally unaware of. | ||
| 47 | 03:48 | Namely, the extent to which you have one of these biased time perspectives. | ||
| 48 | 03:52 | Well there is actually six of them. There are two ways to be present-oriented. | ||
| 49 | 03:55 | There is two ways to be past-oriented, two ways to be future. | ||
| 50 | 03:57 | You can focus on past-positive, or past-negative. | ||
| 51 | 04:01 | You can be present-hedonistic, namely you focus on the joys of life, or present-fatalist -- it doesn't matter, your life is controlled. | ||
| 52 | 04:08 | You can be future-oriented, setting goals. | ||
| 53 | 04:10 | Or you can be transcendental future: namely, life begins after death. | ||
| 54 | 04:15 | Developing the mental flexibility to shift time perspectives fluidly depending on the demands of the situation, that's what you've got to learn to do. | ||
| 55 | 04:22 | So, very quickly, what is the optimal time profile? | ||
| 56 | 04:25 | High on past-positive. Moderately high on future. | ||
| 57 | 04:27 | And moderate on present-hedonism. | ||
| 58 | 04:29 | And always low on past-negative and present-fatalism. | ||
| 59 | 04:34 | So the optimal temporal mix is what you get from the past -- past-positive gives you roots. You connect your family, identity and your self. | ||
| 60 | 04:41 | What you get from the future is wings to soar to new destinations, new challenges. | ||
| 61 | 04:45 | What you get from the present hedonism is the energy, the energy to explore yourself, places, people, sensuality. | ||
| 62 | 04:54 | Any time perspective in excess has more negatives than positives. | ||
| 63 | 04:58 | What do futures sacrifice for success? | ||
| 64 | 05:01 | They sacrifice family time. They sacrifice friend time. | ||
| 65 | 05:03 | They sacrifice fun time. They sacrifice personal indulgence. | ||
| 66 | 05:07 | They sacrifice hobbies. And they sacrifice sleep. So it affects their health. | ||
| 67 | 05:12 | And they live for work, achievement and control. | ||
| 68 | 05:15 | I'm sure that resonates with some of the TEDsters. | ||
| 69 | 05:18 | (Laughter) | ||
| 70 | 05:20 | And it resonated for me. I grew up as a poor kid in the South Bronx ghetto, a Sicilian family -- everyone lived in the past and present. | ||
| 71 | 05:26 | I'm here as a future-oriented person who went over the top, who did all these sacrifices because teachers intervened, and made me future oriented. | ||
| 72 | 05:34 | Told me don't eat that marshmallow, because if you wait you're going to get two of them, until I learned to balance out. | ||
| 73 | 05:41 | I've added present-hedonism, I've added a focus on the past-positive, so, at 76 years old, I am more energetic than ever, more productive, and I'm happier than I have ever been. | ||
| 74 | 05:52 | I just want to say that we are applying this to many world problems: changing the drop-out rates of school kids, combating addictions, enhancing teen health, curing vets' PTSD with time metaphors -- getting miracle cures -- promoting sustainability and conservation, reducing physical rehabilitation where there is a 50-percent drop out rate, altering appeals to suicidal terrorists, and modifying family conflicts as time-zone clashes. | ||
| 75 | 06:14 | So I want to end by saying: many of life's puzzles can be solved by understanding your time perspective and that of others. | ||
| 76 | 06:22 | And the idea is so simple, so obvious, but I think the consequences are really profound. | ||
| 77 | 06:26 | Thank you so much. | ||
| 78 | 06:28 | (Applause) |