Move with the Flow: Metaphorical Perspectives on Time in Chinese Taoists and Atheists

ABSTRACT The ego-moving perspective and the time-moving perspective are the two common metaphors used to spatially represent time. The former describes time as a stationary object and individuals travel through it. Conversely, under the time-moving perspective, individuals remain stationary while time moves toward them. Evidence suggests that religious systems have specific effects on the construal of temporal succession along the sagittal axis. The present study investigated whether religion also affects people’s perspectives on the movement of events in time. Using the ambiguous “Next Wednesday’s meeting” question, we compared preferred responses from two groups of participants with different levels of personal agency: Chinese Taoists and atheists. Based on the Taoist principle of wu-wei which permits its believers to keep stationary and to sense passivity, being approached by desirable future events, we predicted that Taoists, who evidence a lower level of personal agency, would be more likely to adopt the time-moving perspective in comparison to atheists. Analyses of disambiguation responses and personal agency scores support our hypotheses. Overall, these findings suggest that individual variation related to religious concepts might be associated with people’s preferred metaphorical perspectives on time.