By E. J. Mundell
MIAMI, Jun 08 (Reuters Health) - Why do we feel that fun experiences zip by
too quickly, while sad or frightening events occur in agonizing slow motion?
Researchers believe our emotions--and their effect on attention--can make time
'drag' or 'fly.'
Enjoying a party, amusement park or an especially great movie, "your
attention is allocated toward this distraction" and away from tracking the
passage of time, explained Dr. Kimberley Babb of the University of California,
Irvine. She presented the findings here Thursday at the annual meeting of the
American Psychological Society.
Most of us intuitively sense that our emotional state colors our perception
of time. But just how does this occur? In their study, Babb and her colleagues
used film clips to induce one of four emotional states--happiness, sadness, fear
or a 'neutral' emotional condition--in 128 college students. The students were
then set to various 'time tasks,' such as guessing when a minute had elapsed.
Students were also asked to perform these tasks while being distracted by
intellectual puzzles, such as matching US states with their respective state
capitals.
The results? Subjects who began the task feeling either neutral or happy
were relatively accurate in their estimation of judging when a minute had
elapsed, according to Babb.
On the other hand, subjects who began the tests feeling sad or fearful
underestimated the amount of time elapsed--for example, they may have thought 60
seconds had passed when in fact only 45 seconds had gone by. For them, time
'dragged.'
Speaking with Reuters Health, Babb theorized that people in negative
emotional states may be diverting much of their attention toward ruminating on
the reasons and triggers behind their sadness or fear. "They're focusing more on
processing the emotional stimuli," she said. This extra processing crams more
psychological 'events' into a specific time frame--creating what psychologists
call a "filled interval illusion." In other words, sad or fearful states create
the perception that a given time period is longer than it actually is.
On the other hand, happy or 'neutral' states leave our attention free to
provide us with a more accurate assessment of time. And when we combine
happiness with activity (a standard definition of 'fun'), time appears to pass
more quickly. In fact, Babb reported that happy study subjects given distracting
tasks tended to underestimate the amount of elapsed time--believing, for
example, that they had experienced 45 seconds when in fact a full minute had
gone by.
So, "if you're at Disneyland or something like that, you're being
distracted" and time is 'flying,' Babb said. The phenomenon does not rely on any
"content, happy state" per se, but is more strongly linked to the fact that
"you're happy because you're doing something--you're going on the rides, for
example."
She believes the findings have important implications for both the legal and
medical professions. A witness testifying about a traumatic experience may have
an inaccurate perception of the time-frame over which the event took place, for
example.
And Babb said psychologists treating the grieving or depressed may want to
recommend distracting activities as an additional method of treatment. "People
who are depressed or experiencing chronic pain tend to sense a longer interval
of time," she explained. Becoming more active "could be one way of alleviating
that feeling that the days are dragging."
