Time and Content of Significant Life Experiences

An Experiential Inventory instructed a sample of Indian adolescents to list 10 important experiences of their lives, past, present, and future. Each experience then was to be labeled by the respondent according to a more exact temporal location: distant past, near past, present, near future and distant future. A content analysis then was used to catalogue experiences according to four basic typologies: system-reference or the prime actor in the experience, quality or the type of experience, evaluation of the experience, and inherent temporality or the degree of the experience's discreteness or diffuseness in time. Findings include the frequency of experiences in the temporal zones as well as temporal analyses of individual experiential contents. In addition, relationships are demonstrated between the temporal location and content of experiences and their corresponding effects on performance on the total Experiential Inventory. Sex differences are examined finally, in light of a proposed past-present-future integrity.