The Cardinal Directions Effect on Time

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The way people think about time depends on space and you build one out of the other, then they should do this thing. So when we asked people in this community to organize cards that show a person aging from young to old, instead of organizing them from left to right, they organize them from east to west. If they're sitting facing south, they made them go from left toright. But if they're Sitting facing north, they make them go from right to left. And for me, that was just the most amazing thing to see with my own eyes. It's not like time revolves around you. It's more stuck inherent in the earth somehow.

What direction does time point in? None, really, although some people might subconsciously put the past on the left and the future on the right, or the past behind themselves and the future in front, or many other possible orientations. What feels natural to you depends in large degree on the native language you speak, and how it talks about time. This is a clue to a more general phenomenon, how language shapes the way we think. Lera Boroditsky is one of the world’s experts on this phenomenon. She uses how different languages construe time and space (as well as other things) to help tease out the way our brains make sense of the world.

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Lera Boroditsky received her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University. She is currently associate professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego. She serves as Editor in Chief of the journal Frontiers in Cultural Psychology. She has been named one of 25 Visionaries changing the world by the Utne Reader, and is also a Searle Scholar, a McDonnell scholar, recipient of an NSF Career award, and an APA Distinguished Scientist lecturer.

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