People fall on a continuum of being past, present, or future oriented. Past oriented you think back to similar situations in the past. Present oriented you are involved in the sights, smells, and experience of now. These people tend to be prone to envy and jealously, indecisive, moody, do worse in school, Future oriented you are imaging a future. The people do better in school, cooperative, work well under pressure, self reliant and confident, conscientious, live longer. The future oriented people are able to delay gratification, the present oriented people prefer immediate gratification. - Todd Hoff

The temptation demonstration. Can you resist not eat one treat now and get two treats later? This involved impulsive vs reflective action; present vs future-oriented decision making. Present oriented people do not "adequately" discount future rewards. The marshmallow test. Get marshmallow now or get two in a near unspecified amount of time. Some kids give into temptation and eat it now. Others manage to wait and get two marshmallows later. The ones that wait use coping strategies like ignoring the treat, breathing, shaking hands. - Todd Hoff

The kids that ate the marshmallow don't unserstand if-then, causal relations, and probability. They are present oriented. These kids grow up to do bad at school. Before age 4 no kids wait. At age 4 about half do. It takes a certain degree of brain development. - Todd Hoff

Doesn't seem to be genetic, though I find this hard to believe. It's related to cultural and geography. To be future oriented you have to have a sense of trust in the future. - Todd Hoff

6 time perspective factors: past tp - focus on positives; past tp- focus on negatives, they are ruminators, which leads to depression; present tp- hedonism, ignore imagined future consequences, impulsive, innovators, don't learn form experience; present tp- fatalism, giving up; future tp- life goal oriented, high achievers, they don't quit; future tp- transcendental, life after death of mortal body. These are all very different kinds of people in fundamental ways. At the extremes each has good points, but the problems outweigh the positives. - Todd Hoff

Just say no type campaigns don't work for present oriented kids, only for future oriented kids who probably weren't addicts anyway. It's situational. Present hedonistic people never imagine getting caught, so have a gun go to jail type programs simply don't work. - Todd Hoff

IMHO this points out that we really benefit from a mix of different type of people. Innovation, organization, history, etc all come from the mix. The extremes of some types need to be clipped and the approached to helping people needs to be tailored to their type. Unfortunately this is too complex for the populace to grasp. "The past gives your roots. The future gives you wings. The present gives you energy to do the work." - Todd Hoff