The Power of Time Perception

by Jean Paul Zogby

  To empirically test this time distortion effect, researchers took 76 novice sky divers into a plane flying at 14,000 feet above ground. They then measured their fear and stress levels before the skydive and after landing. They also asked them to estimate how long they thought the experience lasted. They found that time appeared to pass more slowly in direct proportion to increase in the level of fear. 57

  In another interesting experiment, Dr. David Eagleman wrapped a special chronometer device around participants’ wrists and made them jump from a 31-meter platform into a safety net to see if they could distinguish very short time intervals when in danger. The results showed that participants felt their free-fall time was, on average, 36% longer than it actually was. This implied that the intense emotional experience of the free fall must have enhanced their alertness and caused them to capture richer memories during the fall, leading to the perception that time slowed down. 58

  Fight or Flight: It Is Wired Into Our Brains

  The instinctive reaction that increases our alertness in response to danger is believed to be a natural product of our evolutionary history. Our ancestors’ brains developed a mechanism that enhanced our ability to make quick decisions in moments crucial to our survival. Psychologists call it the “fight or flight” mode. When in danger, the whole body goes into action. The heart rate rises to pump more blood to the brain. Fat is released into the blood to provide extra energy for the muscles. Sweat is secreted from the skin to provide further cooling if needed, and the brain is flushed with neurotransmitters that enhance the neurons firing rate and information processing speed, to ensure that critical data is captured so that vital decisions can be made. Quick reactions and decisions made in a split second make all the difference between life and death!

  When going through a near-death experience, such as the climbers’ free fall, the “flight or fight” mode is activated. The brain’s concentration and attention levels rise dramatically, causing neurotransmitter levels, like dopamine, to surge suddenly. This boosts the brain’s information processing speed, or “speed of thoughts,” and the brain starts absorbing and recording a huge amount of information in a very short period of time. If the brain normally captures around 10 snapshots every second under relaxed conditions, during an accident, the high level of attention might cause the brain to capture, say, 50 snapshots in just one second. Under normal circumstances, the brain would require five seconds to capture those 50 mental snapshots. When those dense and rich memories are recalled, the brain assumes that these snapshots must have been captured over a period of five seconds, instead of the one second it actually took to capture them. Therefore, one “real” second in a life-threatening situation would appear to have been stretched to five seconds of “perceived” subjective time, and explains why such events appear to run in slow motion.

  Great athletes all have the ability to slow down time by inducing the same kind of focus and concentration produced in life-threatening situations. The only difference is that they can do it at will. Having an alertness and focused attention like that of great sports stars is not impossible to achieve. To succeed, it is important to maintain a healthy brain that enhances our innate level of alertness, so that we can slow down time and make our days last longer. Here are three practical tips.

  Boosting Alertness With Sleep and Exercise

  It is obvious that one way of enhancing alertness is by getting enough sleep. Depriving yourself of adequate sleep does some awful things to your brain. Your ability to plan, learn, concentrate, solve problems, and stay alert is affected. Researchers estimate that if you have been awake for 21 hours straight, your mental ability is equivalent to someone who is legally drunk! The same effect can occur if you had a couple of late nights followed by early mornings. 59 You will be sleepy most of the following day and time will run so fast, that day will be over before you know it. Fortunately, the effects of sleep deprivation are reversible. An extra hour or two of sleep can enhance your performance on tasks that require sustained attention. So never underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep.

  When you force your brain to concentrate for a few hours non-stop, you start losing processing power and your attention levels drop, so time starts to speed up. A quick break or power nap in between can reboot your alertness and replenish your energy levels. The ideal time is between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m., since the body naturally experiences a dip in energy around that period. A nap around that time, as short as 10 minutes but not more than 30 minutes, can restore alertness, and help in slowing down that afternoon. Naps are also the best way to travel painlessly through time into the future, as duly noted by Carlyle, the quintessential kitten in the comic strip Kit and Carlyle!

  Contrary to popular belief, napping at work is not for lazy people. Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, and Bill Clinton were famous nap-takers. In Japan, more and more companies are encouraging employees to sleep on the job. There are even cafes and massage parlors which offer napping services. Companies like Google and Nike have a number of quiet rooms or napping pods around their campus. The same goes for airline companies. A quick catnap is even better than a cup of coffee because caffeine, even though it enhances alertness, can decrease memory performance, meaning you are prone to making mistakes. This trend is gaining momentum as companies realize how costly it is in terms of reduced productivity, errors, and accidents when their employees are sleep-deprived. Power naps are supported by a wealth of research that shows that they improve alertness, learning, and cognition. 60 A study by the U.S. space agency NASA reveals that jet pilots who take a short nap increase their performance by as much as 34 per cent and enhance their alertness by 100 per cent. 61 Therefore, to maintain an alert brain that slows down time throughout the day, it is essential that you get at least seven to eight hours of sleep every night and have a quick power nap when your concentration levels decline.

  Physical exercise has also been shown to increase mental arousal and alertness levels, which are a key factor in slowing the passage of time. 62 Even mild exercise can boost alertness levels by facilitating an adequate constant flow of oxygen to the brain. When the brain is not properly oxygenated, you start losing concentration. The action of gravity tends to keep blood in the lower part of your body and, as a result, you become less alert. That is why it is important to get up and take a walk every hour or so to get the blood pumping and oxygenate the brain.

  One interesting study found that even chewing gum, which is a very mild physical activity, can improve oxygen and blood circulation to the brain and can boost reaction time and alertness by around 10 per cent. 63 Japanese researchers using fMRI to scan the brains of volunteers that performed a mental test on a computer screen while chewing gum found that as many as eight areas of the brain were lit up by the simple act of chewing. These are the same brain areas involved in mental arousal, alertness, and psychomotor skills, and explain why chewing gum improves mental performance. Therefore, remember next time you are having a good time and want that to last longer, chewing gum to boost your alertness can go a long way in slowing down that time experience!

  Diet for an Alert Brain

  We are all very careful in choosing a balanced diet that keeps us healthy, whether it is fish for the heart, bananas for the digestive system, reduced sugar content to prevent diabetes, and anti-oxidants for fighting potential cancers. What about food for the brain? What kind of diet can enhance our alertness so that our brains are capable of recording more of the world around us? Are there any food supplements or nutrients that be used to increase the brain’s processing speed so it captures more mental snapshots and slows the passage of time?

  You are what you eat. What you eat affects how you think. And how you think affects how you experience time. A healthy brain diet is important for maintaining a sharp and alert brain. The type of diet you give to your brain can affect your mental clarity, temperament, and memory, all of which can considerably affect your alertness level and your perceived speed of time. A diet that
contains brain superfoods such as blueberries, dark chocolate, green tea, oily fish, and plenty of water is essential for providing the building blocks the body needs to produce important neurotransmitters, which, as you will recall, are the brain’s chemical messengers. Brain health is outside the scope of this book, but I would strongly recommend reading books such as Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Dr. Daniel G. Amen, Your Creative Brain by Shelley Carson, or Boost Your Brain: The New Art and Science Behind Enhanced Brain Performance by Dr. Majid Fotuhi and Christina Antoniadis. I also offer a free guide to a Healthy Brain Diet that you can download from my website (see details at the end of the book). These brain diets are essential for maintaining the kind of alert brain that can slow down time.

  “You are what you eat. What you eat affects how you think. And how you think affects how you experience time.”

  Recap

  To sum up, the speed at which our brain records reality depends on our ability to sustain focused attention and stay alert. The more alert we are, the faster we can process sensory information and the slower time appears to pass. This is evident from great athletes, the “oddball effect,” and the way time appears in slow motion when going through life-threatening situations. Listening to good music also slows down time. Conversely, time speeds up when we are less alert, such as in the state of daydreaming, drowsy, or going through the deeper levels of sleep. Therefore, when you are in a situation that you really need to speed up, a quick trip to dreamland should do the trick!

  In the next chapter, we will explore the role of emotions on how we perceive time. Our emotions can be a powerful factor in shaping our perception of the speed of time. Therefore, it is important to understand what can be done to control their influence.

  Chapter 7

  Taking Control

  The Effect of Emotions

  From time sadness borrows wings

  ― La Fontaine

  A day without laughter is a day wasted

  ― Charlie Chaplin

  Classifying Emotions

  Emotions play a powerful role in distorting our perception of time. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, and sadness appear to slow down the passage of time, making us feel as though we endure these emotions for longer than we actually do, which make the experience even worse. It is therefore important to understand how this happens and what can be done to shorten the perceived duration of unpleasant feelings and prolong the duration of pleasant ones. Let us start with an exploration of how long emotions really last.

  In contrast to moods, the duration of emotions is generally well-defined. They start with an external trigger and end when the intensity of the emotion subsides. Emotions can last from a few seconds to many hours, whereas moods tend to last longer but are less intense. Sadness is considered the longest-lasting emotion. In a 2014 study, high-school students in Belgium were asked to recall recent emotional states and report their durations. They filled in questionnaires and briefly describe the emotion-triggering event. They then had to rate the duration and intensity of that emotion and its effect. The researchers found that, out of a total of 27 reported emotions, sadness lasted the longest, whereas shame, surprise, fear, and disgust quickly faded. 64 This is because sadness is almost always associated with grave events such as death, or accidents which have a great impact on our lives. The implications of such events take time to digest and we tend to think about the consequences repeatedly in our minds. This, in turn, causes the sad emotions to be strengthened and sustained over a longer period of time. In contrast, emotions such as shame, disgust, and fear are generally the result of involuntary reactions that, although powerful, are often over in a flash. This obviously does not diminish the fact that fear, in situations of domestic abuse, or even shame, such as felt by anorexics, can also last very long.

  Most psychologists agree that emotions can be defined by two main attributes: the intensity of the emotion and its valence. Thus, emotions can be broadly classified into four main groups:

  High intensity and unpleasant, such as fear, anger, and anxiety

  High intensity and pleasant, such as love, passion, and awe

  Low intensity and unpleasant, such as shame, guilt, sadness, and disgust

  Low intensity but pleasant, such as satisfaction, pride, and hope

  “Our emotions dictate the experienced speed of time”

  How Emotions Affect Time Perception

  Over the last 10 years, researchers have started to systematically investigate the mechanisms of time distortions that occur as a result of various emotions. In typical experiments, participants are shown high-intensity pleasant images, such as erotic scenes, while other participants are shown high-intensity unpleasant images, such as a gruesome murder scene. Both sets of images are displayed for the same length of time, but those who watch the pleasant images report shorter durations, as if time was moving fast, while those who see the unpleasant images report longer durations, as if time has slowed.

  Researchers have, similarly, investigated the effect of emotional sounds on time perception. In a 2007 study from Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives in Paris, four groups of sounds were used: (a) pleasant high-intensity sounds, e.g. erotic sounds, (b) pleasant low-intensity sounds, e.g. laughter, (c) unpleasant low-intensity sounds, e.g. sobbing, and (d) unpleasant high-intensity sounds, e.g. a woman wailing. There was also one group of neutral sounds, e.g. street noises. The results confirmed that emotionally unpleasant sounds were perceived to be longer than pleasant or neutral sounds. The rational explanation is that we tend to focus more attention on negative emotions than positive ones. This is because our central nervous system is activated, which speeds up information processing and accelerates the mechanisms that support our brain’s internal clock. A fast ticking internal clock, as we know, leads to an expansion of time intervals, so it feels as if time is running slowly. 65

  Another possible explanation has to do with a particular area in the brain called the anterior insular cortex, which is the size of a prune and tucked deep within the cerebral cortex. This area “lights up” if you try to guess the time— we know this from an fMRI machine that scans your brain. It so happens that this region of the brain is also responsible for processing bodily sensations. We can therefore conclude that the experience of time is related to the amount of stimulation our brains receive from our body, or our level of self-awareness, rather than just the sensory information received from the external world. When we are experiencing an emotional moment, we become more aware of our own body, which simulates the insular cortex and our perception is that time slows down. In contrast, when we are absorbed with an external activity, like watching a movie or reading a book, time seems to fly. Attention to time, such as in waiting or boring situations, draws awareness to our own self causing time to drag. The greater our self-awareness, the slower time passes. So are there any counter-measures we can take to speed up time when we are feeling bad?

  The Effect of Taking Control

  It is important to note that one common aspect of managing time is the need to take control of our emotions. Only by taking control do we nullify the time-expanding effects of negative emotions. Researchers have demonstrated that the effect of time stretching can be corrected by simply making a person feel that he is in control. 66

  In 2012, at the University of Illinois, Dr. Buetti and Dr. Lleras conducted a series of experiments where participants were shown positive and negative images, and were asked to estimate the duration of each image. As expected, the participants consistently over-estimated the duration of negative images, as if time slowed down and under-estimated the duration of positive ones, as if time flew. But then the researchers introduced the illusion of control by telling participants that they could press a button on the keyboard to increase the number of positive images and decrease the number of negative images that appeared on the screen, if they felt the need. Behind the scenes, however, it was the researchers who were actually controlling the number of posi
tive or negative images on screen. For some participants, the researchers followed the participants’ wishes, in order to give them the illusion of control. But for others, they made the participants feel they had no control over how often positive or negative images appeared. When the participants were later asked to estimate the duration of the images, the researchers noted that the lengthening or shortening of time intervals was more or less neutralized for the participants who had the illusion of control. When participants were allowed to believe they were in control, the time expansion caused by their emotions was eliminated!

  An important practical conclusion to take from this result is that in order to neutralize the time-stretching effect of fear, anger, anxiety, or sadness, you need to convince yourself that you are in control. This is essential if you want to shorten the amount of time for which you have to endure these negative feelings. What follows are a few practical tips that will help you do just that.

  When you Feel Fear