UC Santa Barbara

People typically hold personal views regarding the appropriate age ranges for significant life events, such as starting college, getting married, or having kids. Such socially prescribed timetables have been termed the social clock. In this paper, we investigate how and why culture may influence the rigidity (or flexibility) of the social clock. In two studies (one preregistered), participants from China and the U.S. were asked to provide the earliest and the latest ages they think appropriate for engaging in several life events. We operationalized the social clock’s rigidity as the width of the time windows for these life events. We found notable cultural differences: the social clock was more rigid in China than in the U.S., and the cultural differences were mediated by filial piety belief. We further assessed negative social emotions of deviance from the social clocks across cultures. Societal implications and future directions were discussed.