Time perspective manifests in words – specifically, verbs in the past tense (e.g., “the experience was great”), the present tense (e.g., “the experience is great”), or the future tense (e.g., “the experience will be great”).
There is research that considers whether this linguistic shift in time perspective impacts how people interpret the message. The University of Toronto study "Time perspective and helpfulness: Are communicators more persuasive in the past, present, or future tense?" in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 110, January 2024, 104544, asserts that any message specially the online reviews articulated in the present tense holds greater persuasive power compared to other forms.
Researchers says that's because the present tense makes a message seem more specific and concrete, which helps audiences better visualize its meaning and feel psychologically closer to the author.
"The more vivid something is, the more real and true it seems", says Sam Maglio, co-author of the study and professor of marketing and psychology at U of T Scarborough. "The past and the future aren't as vivid as the present. In the present tense, you as the reader take a journey with the speaker and you become immersed. We are experiencing it together".
Maglio, along with David Fang, a U of T alumnus, examined millions of Amazon reviews to determine the impact of verb tense on helpfulness ratings. They found that reviews written in the present tense received significantly more upvotes than those written in the past or future tense.
This trend persisted even when considering other factors such as pictures, review length, and star ratings. Additionally, when hundreds of participants were asked to rate reviews, they consistently favored those written in the present tense.
But researchers found a catch when studying live participants. They had about 500 people rate reviews by helpfulness and told them the reviewers were either relatively nearby (within Canada) or on the other side of the world (in Australia). The reviews written in Canada showed that present tense verbs boosted people's perception of helpfulness, while the Australian reviews showed verb tense made little difference.
"Reviews are maximally helpful when they are right here and they're right now because the closer the reader can come to seeing it, touching it, making it palpable, the more they believe it and the more they trust it", says Maglio, who is cross-appointed to the Rotman School of Management. "It's hard to be immersive and vivid and visceral from a world away".
The impact went beyond website comment sections. The researchers showed about 400 people a pitch asking for donations to a charity that was written in past, present or future tense, and told them they were entered in a lottery with a $50 payout. When asked what percentage of their winnings they'd give to the charity, the study participants donated about 28% when the proposal was written in future or past tenses. With just a few words switched to present, the figure jumped to about 38%. (The researchers then actually donated those percentages to the non-profit Helping Hands).
The study joins a growing body of research that finds communicating about the world in concrete ways makes us seem more believable to audiences. Just as using "the active voice" has become a ubiquitous piece of writing advice, Maglio hopes the present tense will one day become common knowledge.
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