Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States of America.
Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Mar 8;19(3):e0292963. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292963. eCollection 2024.
Past research has shown that culture can form and shape our temporal orientation-the relative emphasis on the past, present, or future. However, there are mixed findings on how temporal orientations vary between North American and East Asian cultures due to the limitations of survey methodology and sampling. In this study, we applied an inductive approach and leveraged big data and natural language processing between two popular social media platforms-Twitter and Weibo-to assess the similarities and differences in temporal orientation in the United States of America and China, respectively. We first established predictive models from annotation data and used them to classify a larger set of English Twitter sentences (NTW = 1,549,136) and a larger set of Chinese Weibo sentences (NWB = 95,181) into four temporal catetories-past, future, atemporal present, and temporal present. Results show that there is no significant difference between Twitter and Weibo on past or future orientations; the large temporal orientation difference between North Americans and Chinese derives from their different prevailing focus on atemporal (e.g., facts, ideas) present (Twitter) or temporal present (e.g., the "here" and "now") (Weibo). Our findings contribute to the debate on cultural differences in temporal orientations with new perspectives following a new methodological approach. The study's implications call for a reevaluation of how temporal orientation is measured in cross-cultural studies, emphasizing the use of large-scale language data and acknowledging the atemporal present category. Understanding temporal orientations can guide effective cross-cultural communication strategies to tailor approaches for different audience based on temporal orientations, enhancing intercultural understanding and engagement.
过去的研究表明，文化可以形成和塑造我们的时间取向——即对过去、现在或未来的相对强调。然而，由于调查方法和抽样的限制，关于北美和东亚文化之间的时间取向如何变化，存在着混合的发现。在这项研究中，我们应用了一种归纳方法，利用两个流行的社交媒体平台——Twitter 和微博——之间的大数据和自然语言处理，分别评估美国和中国的时间取向的相似性和差异。我们首先从注释数据中建立了预测模型，并使用它们将更大的一组英语 Twitter 句子（NTW=1,549,136）和更大的一组中文微博句子（NWB=95,181）分类为四个时间类别——过去、未来、非时间现在和时间现在。结果表明，Twitter 和微博在过去或未来的取向方面没有显著差异；北美人与中国人之间巨大的时间取向差异源于他们对非时间（例如，事实、思想）现在（Twitter）或时间现在（例如，“这里”和“现在”）（微博）的不同侧重点。我们的发现为关于时间取向的文化差异的争论提供了新的视角和新的方法学方法。该研究的意义呼吁重新评估跨文化研究中时间取向的测量方式，强调使用大规模语言数据，并承认非时间现在类别。理解时间取向可以指导有效的跨文化沟通策略，根据时间取向为不同的受众量身定制方法，增强跨文化理解和参与。
