The Power of Time Perception
Page 11
We saw in the previous chapter how time seems to pass in slow motion for people experiencing extreme fear in life-threatening situations. Time appears to slow down in direct proportion to the amount of fear induced by the situation. In 2011, psychologists Sylvie Droit-Volet and Sandrine Gil gathered a group of psychology students at the University of Blaise, in France, to study how emotions affected their sense of time. 67 One group of students was shown excerpts from movies that are known to induce fear (such as The Blair Witch Project, Scream, and The Shining), and another group was shown extracts from sad movies (such as City of Angels, Philadelphia, or Dangerous Minds). A third group was shown "neutral" video clips (like weather forecasts or stock market updates). The researchers then asked the students to estimate the duration of the movie clips. They found that fear distorted time perception the most. Students who watched the horror movies felt that scenes were much longer than they really were, while the sad and neutral movies had little effect. In a similar study at Saint Joseph's College of Maine in 2007, students were shown one of two video clips; one clip was taken from the news coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the other clip was a non-stressful familiar scene from The Wizard of Oz. Even though both clips were exactly three minutes long, students who watched the stressful September 11 footage estimated its duration to be much longer compared to the non-stressful Oz clip. 68
To watch a scary movie is one thing, but to actually experience real fear is something else. Back in 1961, researchers at Clark University, Massachusetts, blindfolded some students and asked them to walk on a high platform towards a drop, towards danger, while other students were requested to walk away from it, towards safety. The results showed that the students who were in danger tended to over-estimate the duration of that walk compared to the students who were walking towards safety. 69 Furthermore, some students were asked to stop and wait at 15 feet from the drop. They felt that time passed slower than those who were asked to stop at a much safer distance. The fear of imminent danger caused the waiting time interval to stretch. In a similar study, arachnophobic participants who spent one minute watching a spider judged that duration to be longer compared to non-arachnophobic participants. Time seemed to slow down in direct proportion to their fear of spiders. 70
Fear has been shown to be one of the most intense emotions. It causes physical responses such as dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, accelerated heart rate, release of adrenalin, and a surge in alertness. These reactions form the basis of our “fight or flight” instinct, the defensive mechanism that we explored earlier. When we experience fear, the heightened level of alertness causes the brain’s information processing speed to rise dramatically, so that the brain can make the best-informed decision. When those memories are recalled, they appear to have taken longer to capture. In other words, fear causes the brain’s internal clock to speed up so you can react faster. This leads to the stretching of time intervals, hence the perception of a “slowing down” of time. This is useful for short bursts of fear, such as in a fist fight or when under attack by an animal. It is only when fear is constant that the time-distorting effect becomes substantial enough to affect people’s lives. So what can we do to shorten the duration of these negative emotions?
“Time appears to slow down in direct proportion to the amount of fear induced”
Psychologists agree that the best ways to deal with fear is to first acknowledge and define it. Is it a fear of people? Fear of public speaking? Fear of heights? Fear of germs, or fear of public spaces? Maybe it is fear of death, as Woody Allen once notably said: “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens!” It might not be easy to name because it could be mixed in with other emotions like anxiety or shame. But defining and understanding your fear and where it began is crucial to gaining control over it, and research has shown that one of the most effective ways to overcome fear is to confront it. Was it a negative experience from the past? Something that occurred in childhood? What triggers that fear?
This is all easier said than done, of course, and, in many cases, overcoming fear requires the support of a psychiatrist. However, research has shown that one of the most effective ways to overcome fears is to confront them. Recall that our instinctive reaction to fear is “fight,” “flight,” or “freeze.” That is the way our brains have been wired throughout millions of years of evolution. If something looks weaker than us, we fight it. If it looks stronger but slower, we run. If it looks stronger and faster, there is not much we can do but freeze and hope it does not see us! But freezing or running will not conquer our fears. We must confront them head-on, exposing ourselves to small doses so that we overcome our fears bit by bit. So, if you are an arachnophobic, it would be a good idea to put yourself in situations where you encounter spiders—first from a great distance, and by decreasing that distance over time. It is also important to surround ourselves with people who encourage us to overcome our fears. As we shall see shortly, the people we spend the most time with affect our emotional state and thus the perceived speed of time.
When you are Angry
The American Psychological Association defines anger as “a reaction to a perceived threat to ourselves, our loved ones, our property, our self-image, or some part of our identity.” Intensity varies widely from mild irritation to extreme rage. Anger produces physical reactions, starting with a rush of adrenaline, increased heart rate and blood pressure, and the tightening of muscles. These reactions increase alertness levels and influence the way we experience time.
The effect of anger on our perception of time is similar to fear in that it slows it down. This is consistent with studies showing that anger and fear are both highly intense and unpleasant emotions. In one study, psychologist Sylvie Droit-Volet showed students images of four different facial expressions: angry, fearful, happy, and neutral, and asked them to estimate how long the image was shown for. The duration of angry facial expressions was consistently over-estimated when compared to happy faces. 71 The same effect was confirmed in 2007 at the University of Blaise Pascal, France, when children, three to eight years old, were shown angry and neutral female faces. They tended to judge the duration of angry faces to be longer than that of neutral faces. This effect is, therefore, a natural inborn instinct. 72
Our reaction has to do with our evolutionary history and built-in defense mechanism. We feel anger in response to a perceived grievance, which we blame on someone else. Anger drives us to focus our attention on the perceived threat and take action in order to regain control. Increased alertness leads to a rise in our information processing speed, which is crucial for anticipating danger and preparing to act quickly. The result is an expansion of time intervals and the perception that time is passing slowly. So what can we do about it? How can we shorten a period of anger?
Well, we cannot completely eliminate or avoid the things or people that enrage us, but we can learn to control our reactions. This is not to say that anger cannot be useful, such as in response to being treated badly as an employee, but it should be funneled into a constructive response. Anger generally needs to be controlled because, if left unchecked, it can affect our health and will make unpleasant situations seem to last longer than they do. Too much uncontrolled anger will bottle up and you’ll end up blowing up one day when you least expect it. If you have seen the comedy movie Anger Management, there is a scene where Jack Nicholson tries to explain to Adam Sandler that there are two kinds of angry people in this world: explosive and implosive. The explosive screams at the cashier for not accepting their coupons. The implosive is the cashier who keeps quiet until one day he shoots everyone in the store. We have all heard that suppressing anger can lead to stomach ulcers or heart problems. But this does not mean we should vent by shouting at people or kicking a door.
Research has shown that such actions can still have the same negative effect on our health. Anger fires up our “fight or flight” response and causes our heart to race, our jaw to clench, and the release of
fat from our muscles, just in case we need that extra energy for the fight. If those fats are not used as energy, they end up sticking on our artery walls. Thus every time your blood pressure shoots up, you inflict a small injury on your heart. This is not a major problem for a healthy heart, but if repeated day after day or if someone already has heart problems, it might lead to a heart attack. In fact, research has shown that healthy people who are angry often are 19 percent more likely to get a heart attack compared to calmer people. 73
So how do we become constructive with our anger? “Anger management” is one of the best ways. It can help you understand what triggers your angry feelings and show you how to express yourself in a healthy and positive way. Taking control is, again, the way to go. Here are a few tips to consider.
When we were kids, we were taught to think before we speak. Research has shown that this is even more important when we are angry. In the heat of the moment, it is easy to say something we will later regret. But when we breathe slowly, imagine a relaxing scene, or slowly repeat a calming mantra, we give ourselves more time to think. This reduces the heart rate and blood pressure, so that angry feelings subside. It also causes alertness levels and brain processing speed to return to normal levels, returning the internal clock to its normal ticking speed, and the time-stretching effect of anger is neutralized. The faster we can get over it, the shorter the duration of that burst of anger will seem. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Remember that for every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”
When You Are Sad
Sadness occurs when we lose something or someone that is important to us. It can range from a simple and brief unhappiness to a long-term grief or sorrow. If not dealt with, it can become chronic and lead to depression. Depression is often described as “gloominess” or “dejection” and it can be devastating. According to the American Psychiatry Association, “depression is characterized by symptoms of a depressive mood indicated by the feeling of being sad or empty, as well as by a markedly diminished ability to take pleasure in things.” Depression is a mood disorder that has a long-lasting duration. It is not a discrete emotion but a mixture of sadness, fear, and anxiety. Important symptoms include a greater desire to be alone, sleeping more than usual, no interest in the usual surroundings, and a loss of appetite. Depressed individuals often feel hopeless; they stop enjoying things and look at the world with negativity.
Let’s go back to the experiment which we described earlier, where students were shown horror and drama movies. Researchers, surprisingly, found that students who watched the sad drama movies did not report any major slowing down of time, even though they felt less happy after viewing the drama films. Unlike the emotion of fear, sadness does not drastically alter the perception of time. The reason is that sadness is considered to be a low-intensity emotion that induces a slowing down of mental and motor activity.74 The strength of a feeling of sadness depends on its cause, such as frustration, grief, or sympathy with others, as well as on its intensity and duration. Only prolonged periods of intense sadness will develop into depression, and that does have the strength to affect time perception. 75 But the feelings of sadness that are produced by watching drama movies are not considered to be strong enough to affect the brain’s physiological functions or its internal clock speed.
On the other hand, profound sadness and depression often result in a feeling that time is passing more slowly than normal. In a recent study that was conducted on 21 clinically depressed patients, participants were asked to count up to 30 at the rate of one count per second. The results showed that it took them almost 40 seconds to “produce” the 30-second time interval. The results confirm that depression causes an expansion of time intervals and a slowing down of the experience of time. 76 So what does research say about the best ways to shorten those sad periods?
Psychologists tend to agree that ignoring sad thoughts is not helpful and the consensus is that expressing sadness helps to exorcise it. But ruminating over sadness for long periods can be emotionally damaging, too. It is true that sadness needs time to heal but sadness stretches that time in our mind, making it appear longer than it really is. La Fontaine was right when he said “From time sadness borrows wings” which is sometimes translated as “Sadness flies away on the wings of time.” To counter that, psychologists recommend distractions, such as reading a book or going for a walk. It has also been shown that listening to upbeat music, singing, and dancing can improve overall mood. Socializing is another great distraction, so it is very important to connect with close friends in times of sadness. Studies have also found that volunteering time to charity and helping others can help to relieve sadness. To make someone smile makes us feel good and causes us to appreciate what we have, giving us a more positive perspective. 77, 78
When You Are Anxious
“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday” wrote Dale Carnegie. The American Psychiatric Association defines anxiety as “an unpleasant state of inner turmoil, often accompanied by nervous behavior, such as pacing back and forth, complaints, and rumination.” Anxiety is not the same as fear. Fear is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat. Anxiety is the expectation of a future threat. Anxiety is a feeling of worry, or an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing.
When we worry, time seems to slow down. 79 If you are late for an important meeting and traveling in your car with an empty gas tank, one minute at a traffic light might seem like an hour. That is the effect of anxiety. Studies done on cancer patients who are mentally distressed and suffering from high anxiety levels confirm that they often feel time crawling. 80
Social rejection is another form of anxiety and leads to a slower experience of time. In a study conducted at San Diego State University in 2003, undergraduate students were separated into groups of four to six people of the same sex. They had their names written on tags and were allowed to talk to each other for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the experimenter led the students to separate rooms, where each participant had to nominate two group members that they would most like to work with. However, instead of using the nominations, the students were randomly assigned to be rejected or accepted. Rejected students were told that no one had picked them while accepted students were told that everyone had picked them. In both cases, they were told that they had to work alone because of the unusual outcome. The task was to estimate two time intervals of 40 and 80 seconds each. The results were clear: the “rejected” students significantly over-estimated the time interval’s duration, in clear contrast to the fairly accurate estimates of the “accepted” students. This demonstrates that time passes very slowly when someone is anxious and socially rejected. 81 The reason is that anxiety increases the level of attention to the passage of time, making it seem longer than it really is. It also increases self-examination and self-awareness which, as we saw, causes durations to appear longer than they really are. So, how can we shorten those moments of anxiety?
The key to overcoming anxiety is to understand that it is all in our mind. Anxiety is the anticipation of a future risk, one that may or may not occur. It is an overreaction to a situation that is perceived to be possibly threatening, or an internal rumination about an imaginary menace. When we are anxious, our brain is tricked into treating the situation as real danger and the default reaction to danger, as we saw, is the “fight or flight” mode. The easy way out is, of course, to run away and this is what we tend to do. We might distract ourselves with something else, like listening to music or checking social media. However, the fact is that these actions only provide the illusion of safety rather than a permanent cure. Psychologists recommend a more drastic approach, which starts with direct confrontation of the thing you are worried about.
To start, it helps to realize that most of our anxieties are only exaggerated worries. It also helps to move outside of our comfort zone and expose ourselves to small doses of our anxieties, so as to become less sensitive to thei
r symptoms. For instance, someone that is about to deliver a speech to an auditorium full of experts in a field where they are not very knowledgeable would experience extreme anxiety. However, if they have already delivered 20 similar speeches on a familiar subject, they would certainly be more comfortable and confident.
Psychologists have found that anxiety feeds and grows on negative self-talk, and that is impacted whether someone is an optimist or a pessimist. If the unspoken thoughts that run through someone’s mind are mostly positive, they would see unpleasant situations in a more favorable way and expect the best outcomes to occur, not the worst. However, if the self-talk is mostly negative, they will view most situations in a pessimistic manner. This is why psychologists emphasize the importance of being optimistic in treating anxieties. They also encourage the company of positive friends, as this diverts attention from exaggerated worries and helps to ground anxieties. This leads us to another factor that influences the speed of time: the emotions induced by the people we spend the most time with.
“In order to neutralize the time-stretching effect of fear, anger, anxiety, or sadness, you need to convince yourself that you are in control”
Who Do You Spend Time With?
“Tell me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are.” We have all heard that popular saying before. You might have cheerful, always-smiling friends or more pessimistic, gloomy ones. Your friends might be easily irritable and hot-tempered, or maybe they are cool, relaxed, and laid-back. They may be the anxious type, or calm and unconcerned, taking things in stride.
The people you spend time with influence the person you become and, as it turns out, the type of people you hang out with also influence the speed of time you experience. In order to understand why this is, we must look at the psychological concept of “embodied emotion.” This is defined as “the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person.” When you are in the company of another person, you unconsciously imitate their emotion—whether it is happiness, sadness, anger, or anxiety. We do this subconsciously because it enables us to be empathetic. This sort of emotional intelligence varies widely from one person to another—some people are extremely sensitive to others emotions whereas others tend to be self-contained. Regardless of your tendency, embodied emotions are an essential tool in any meaningful social interaction.