Although humans generally prefer immediate over delayed rewards, there is substantial variation between individuals in the motivational salience assigned to the present vs. the future. Time orientation is an important psychological factor because present time orientation underlies several negative life outcomes, such as obesity, substance use, and aggression (Peters & Büchel, 2011; Van Lange et al., 2017). While women have a higher capacity to postpone rewards (Silverman, 2003) and lower levels of aggression than men (Archer, 2009), it has recently been proposed that time orientation and self-control also explain cross-cultural differences in aggression and violence (Van Lange et al., 2017). Evolutionary theory predicts—and experimental evidence finds—that ecology and climate can affect human psychology. However, the evidence as to whether individuals from colder climates have higher self-control and an increased orientation for the future rather than the present is mixed (Ijzerman et al., 2017; Van Lange et al., 2017). To explore this question with a new approach, we use corpus-based text analysis of literary fiction from regions around the world. We use the semantic codes in Wmatrix (Rayson, 2009) to extract the semantic domains concerning time orientation and aggression. We thus explore cross-cultural and sex differences in the extent to which authors of literary fiction focus on present vs. future time horizons and use words related to violence, crime, and death. Our findings provide new evidence for the psychological questions on cross-cultural and sex differences in time orientation and aggression.
Ijzerman et al. (2017). Does distance from the equator predict self-control? Lessons from the Human Penguin Project. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.
Peters, J., & Büchel, C. (2011). The neural mechanisms of inter-temporal decision-making: understanding variability. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(5), 227-239.
Rayson, P. (2009) Wmatrix: a web-based corpus processing environment, Computing Department, Lancaster University. http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/wmatrix/
Silverman, I. W. (2003). Gender differences in delay of gratification: A meta-analysis. Sex roles, 49(9), 451-463.
Van Lange, P. A., Rinderu, M. I., & Bushman, B. J. (2017). Aggression and violence around the world: A model of CLimate, Aggression, and Self-control in Humans (CLASH). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.
