Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler

This violent distortion of his time sense shows up in a revealing experiment conducted by psychologist John Condry, Professor in the Department of Human Development, Cornell University. In separate studies at Cornell and UCLA, Condry gave groups of students the opening paragraph of a story. This paragraph described a fictional "Professor Hoffman," his wife and their adopted Korean daughter. The daughter is found crying, her clothes torn, a group of other children staring at her. The students were asked to complete the story. What the subjects did not know is that they had previously been divided into two groups. In the case of one group, the opening paragraph was set in the past. The characters "heard," "saw" or "ran." The students were asked to "Tell what Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman did and what was said by the children." For the second group, the paragraph was set entirely in the future tense. They were asked to "Tell what Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman will do and what will be said by the children." Apart from this shift of tense, both paragraphs and instructions were identical. The results of the experiment were sharply etched. One group wrote comparatively rich and interesting story-endings, peopling their accounts with many characters, creatively introducing new situations and dialogue. The other produced extremely sketchy endings, thin, unreal and forced. The past was richly conceived; the future empty. "It is," Professor Condry commented, "as if we find it easier to talk about the ...

Children Future Experiment