The Power of Time Perception

by Jean Paul Zogby

  Embodied emotions also include synchronizing your talking and walking speed with that of another person. We acquire this tendency early on, when as babies we learn to match the vocalizations of our mothers. In response, mothers talk to their children at the speed that matches their ability to process information. As well, when a youngster spends time with a senior person, who speaks and walks more slowly, the young person's walking and talking speed slows down as well. In a seminal study undertaken in 1996, students in an experimental group at New York University were asked to form sentences with words that are related to the stereotype of the elderly, such as “worried,” “Florida,” “old,” “lonely,” “grey,” “wise,” “stubborn,” “forgetful,” “retired,” “wrinkle,” and “bitter.” The other students in the control group had to use neutral words. When they left the laboratory to reach the elevator, the students who had been primed with the words relating to the elderly walked more slowly than the non-primed students! 82

  When you spend time with an elderly person, you unconsciously mimic their slow movement and your internal clock adapts to their slower speed. In the same way, if you spend time with an anxious person, you unconsciously internalize and imitate his or her feelings, which causes your internal clock to speed up, and time will feel slower. No matter the situation, you become attuned to what another person is feeling and your time perception will be distorted accordingly.

  The same holds true for being in the company of sad or depressed people. When we see someone with a sad expression, we are sympathetic and assume that the person is in need of help. This alerts us to give assistance, which increases our attention, which then speeds up our internal clock and results in a slowing down of perceived time. In an interesting study, psychologist Sylvie Droit-Valet and her colleagues inhibited this mimicry process by putting a pen in their observers’ mouths, thus freezing their facial expressions. This prevented them from spontaneously imitating another person’s facial expression, and therefore preventing them from developing sympathetic feelings that would otherwise occur. As a result, the time-stretching effect was neutralized, and their internal clock remained steady, regardless of the emotion being perceived in the other 83. It is the same with people who get a Botox treatment and end up with a “frozen face.” They have greater difficulty embodying other people's emotional expressions and are less empathetic towards them. As a result, Botox will neutralize the time distortion that is normally experienced when people are unconsciously trying to mimic someone’s emotional state!

  Emotions are contagious and will directly affect our own time experience, speeding it up or slowing it down depending on the other person’s emotional state. Once again, choose your friends wisely!

  When You Feel Awe

  High-intensity emotions generally speed up our internal clock and slow down time. The feeling of awe is another emotion that creates this effect, but it also enhances the feeling that time is abundant.

  Awe is characterized by two aspects. It involves the perception of vastness, which is the sense that one has encountered something unfathomable in size or beauty, like the Grand Canyon; in complexity, like thunderstorms; or it involves a personal turning point, like witnessing childbirth. In such cases, the trigger is positive. But awe can also have negative triggers, such as witnessing the devastation of a tsunami or earthquake. Awe is also a core feature of mystical experiences. It involves a sense of transcendence of time and space, a sensation that cannot be described, and a feeling that one has experienced a profound insight into the nature of the universe itself.

  Awe may change your outlook on life, which would impact the way you perceive the world. This was confirmed in a widely-publicized study done in 2011 that found that feelings of awe can change one’s openness to new experiences, and it can last for years. Participants were recruited from the local community of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, through flyers, which announced a study on the effect of magic mushroom (psilocybin) on the state of consciousness. Volunteers, who had never taken a psychedelic drug before, were administered a high dose of psilocybin, which caused about two-thirds of them to have deep mystical experiences and feelings of awe. 84 They described the awe experience as life-changing and mind-expanding. They also showed a sustained rise in their openness to new experiences, which was evident more than a year later.

  In another 2012 study at the University of Minnesota, researchers evaluated the effect of awe on time perception They wanted to see if feelings of awe could expand people’s perception of time-availability which, in turn, might improve their overall happiness. This is important since we now live in a fast-paced age, where time pressure is a constant feature of our daily lives. All students were first given fast-paced mental tasks to prime them and make them feel short of time. The students were then split into four groups and shown videos that either evoked awe or happiness. The awe group was shown a commercial with inspiring and mentally overwhelming scenes such as waterfalls, whales, and space astronauts, while the happiness group watched a commercial featuring people marching through rainbow confetti whilst waving flags and wearing brightly colored clothes and face paint. After viewing the films, all participants who experienced awe feelings felt that time had slowed down and was more plentiful. They agreed with statements like “I have lots of time in which I can get things done,” and “time is expanded.” Participants in the happiness group, on the other hand, felt more impatient and agreed with statements like “I am pressed for time,” and “time is constricted.”

  In a separate room, another group of students were instructed to read a short story about a person who ascended the Eiffel Tower and saw Paris from up high, while a second group of students read a neutral story about ascending an unnamed tower and seeing a plain landscape. They were asked to try and feel as the character in the story would have felt. None of the stories contained the word “awe.” At the end of the session, the students had to answer questionnaires that assessed their perception of time and their willingness to volunteer their time. They were also asked whether they preferred material products, like a jacket, or experiential goods, like dinner at a restaurant. The results were again quite interesting. The awe group felt that time slowed down, which increased time-availability and they were more willing to volunteer their time to charities, as compared to other participants. They also showed a preference for experiences rather than material products, and they felt they had a more satisfying life. 85

  The great Charles Darwin once noted that “attention, if sudden and close, graduates into surprise; and this into astonishment; and this into stupefied amazement, akin close to terror.” 86 The feeling of intense awe involves surprise, astonishment, and “stupefied amazement.” These are very close to feelings of terror and fear, as all require a high level of alertness. Moreover, awe causes people to focus on the present moment. As we know, intense focus increases the brain’s internal clock speed and results in the slowing down of time experience. So the next time you are under pressure and feel you are unable to complete things on time, use awe to slow time down. Take a hike, have a picnic, or walk through nature—do any activity that causes you to live in the moment, because this will induce feelings of awe, which in turn significantly stretches your day. Natural time is not measured in seconds or minutes but, rather, in sunrises and sunsets and in the change of seasons. Time is embedded in the natural scenery and moves at such a grand scale that it cannot be contained by the measured ticking of clocks.

  Recap

  In summary, the various emotions that we might feel during the day have different effects on our time perception. Fear, anger, anxiety, and sadness all slow down the apparent passage of time, causing us to endure them for longer than we have to. The key to countering that effect is to believe you are in control. The apparent speed of time also depends on the people you are with and how they make you feel. We may be powerless in controlling the actual duration of our negative emotions, but we have covered a few tips that we can us
e to shorten their perceived duration. Feelings of awe also expand our perception of time and enhance the feeling that time is plentiful. The good news is that you do not have to visit the Grand Canyon or get involved in some wild religious or spiritual gathering to trigger that emotion. Studies have shown that all you need is to simply relive a moment when you felt awe. So when you are down, running out of time, or feel the days are slipping by, sit back and relax, watch the National Geographic channel, or YouTube for those awe-inspiring 60-second video clips of nature. Or simply close your eyes and recall an awesome experience from your past to create the feeling of having abundant time that will last for days!

  Chapter 8

  What Kind of Person Are You?

  The Effect of Personality Traits on Time Perception

  The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits

  ― Albert Camus, The Plague

  The Speed of Thought

  Admiral Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) was a British Royal Navy officer who led several expeditions to explore the Canadian Arctic. Fictitious stories of his adventures are recounted in a novel by Sten Nadolny titled The Discovery of Slowness, in which Franklin is depicted as having attained unimaginable victories due to a strange quality he possesses, namely his very slow perception. In one battle, for instance, Franklin pinpoints the location of a sniper, carefully notes the angle at which shots have been discharged, and takes the sniper down in one shot from the top of an enemy warship mast. Regardless of whether Franklin really was slow or not, the reason I reference his story is because his teacher, an 18th century scientist named Dr. Orme, had invented a device to measure the speed at which people perceive their surroundings. This instrument was made up of a disk fastened to a crank on which a man was painted on one side, and a woman painted on the other. When the disk was turned slowly, the man and the woman appeared to follow each other in succession. However, as the speed increased, the observer could no longer perceive the order in which the man and woman came into view, and it looked as though the man and woman were hugging each other. Using this device, Dr. Orme could measure people’s speed of perception by recording the speed at which the man and woman appeared simultaneously. This is similar to the flickering tests (FFF) that measure how fast we can detect flickering lights, which we already saw in Chapter 3. Dr. Orme observed that Franklin had a very slow speed of perception and saw the couple together when the device was turning at a very slow speed. To borrow a camera metaphor, it was as if he had a very long “exposure time” so that successive events were perceived as happening simultaneously.

  You may have noticed how some people are fast thinkers and able to absorb a lot of information in a very short period of time. In school, for instance, some students are fast learners, while others need information to be repeated a couple of times before they grasp what is being taught. It is like the idle running speed of a car engine. For an average household car, when the throttle pedal is not pressed, the idle engine would run at 600 rpm. At that speed, the engine generates enough power to run basic functions like the water pump, power steering, and air-conditioning. But for a Formula One race car, the idle running speed of its engine runs at 1,000 rpm, allowing the engine to generate more power and perform many more functions. In the same way, some people’s brain engines run at a higher-speed while others run at an average speed or below. You can think of it as the innate level of alertness or mental arousal. Since the perceived speed of time depends on the speed of perception, it follows that we all experience time differently, depending on our brain’s engine speed.

  You may have encountered gifted children who can perform an amazing number of mathematical calculations quickly and with relative ease. This is possible because of their enhanced processing speed, which slows the subjective speed of time. Some people can read over 1,000 words per minute, and experience a stretching of time as information flashes through their mind in seconds. Interestingly, studies have also shown that children who have played video games in their childhood are better able to detect fast-flickering lights compared to kids who’ve never played video games. 87 Flicker fusion, as you recall, is a measure of the brain’s information processing speed. Brain scientists confirm that playing video games can nearly double a child’s intelligence. One study of 491 boys and girls, aged 12 years old, also showed that playing video games increased their creativity substantially. 88 Another study conducted with 3,195 children from six European countries, aged between six and 11 years old, showed that children who played video games for, on average, five hours per week were more likely to do well in school and get along with their peers. 89 In all such cases, video games elevate alertness by focusing attention and enhancing the brain’s processing speed, which causes time to subjectively slow down.

  It is obvious that we do not all experience the same speed of time. We absorb the world at slightly different processing speeds, and this depends on several factors that influence our brain’s electrical activity levels, including our short-term memory capacity and the speed of our internal clocks. These individual differences in brain processing speed are also evident in our personality traits. You could be an introvert or an extrovert; a morning or a night person; easily bored or constantly entertained; intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated; carefree or anxious; impulsive or patient. All these personality traits play an important role in speeding up or slowing down your experience of time because, as we shall see, they are closely related to how alert our brains are and our information processing speed, both of which are crucial factors in time perception. So let us examine these personality traits in order to better understand why we experience time the way we do.

  “The type of person you are greatly affects how you experience time”

  Introvert or Extrovert?

  We previously saw how time slows when alertness levels are boosted in life-threatening situations, out-of-the-ordinary situations, and times of intense emotion. Alertness levels also vary throughout the day. An hour in the morning feels longer than the same interval in the afternoon because we are more alert in the morning. Moreover, our natural levels of alertness vary from one person to the next, and so does our experience of time. This depends on what neuroscientists call “cortical arousal” which is the extent to which our brains are responsive to stimulation. It is a measure of the intrinsic level of brain activity and the speed at which we process sensory information. It is based on our unique temperament, which is partly genetic. Depending on that innate level of mental arousal, psychologists have recognized two core personality types: extroverts who are more outgoing and talkative, and introverts who enjoy more reserved, reflective, and solitary behavior.

  Extroverts thrive around others and work well in groups. Most take pleasure in large social gatherings, parties, public demonstrations, and political groups. They prefer active places that are noisy. They are natural multi-taskers, are not easily distracted, dislike repetition and routine, and can easily get bored when alone. Some famous extroverts are Oprah, Barak Obama, Margret Thatcher, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill, and Queen Marie Antoinette.

  Introverts, on the other hand, take pleasure in solitary activities where they get internal stimulation, such as reading, writing, hiking, and fishing. They enjoy spending time alone and prefer to concentrate on one activity at a time, for they can be easily distracted. They are best in situations where they are able to reflect on their own, rather than interacting with others. Introversion is not to be confused with shyness or antisocial behavior. Most artists, writers, sculptors, engineers, composers, inventors are highly introverted. Examples of famous introverts are Bill Gates, Christina Aguilera, Albert Einstein, Emma Watson, David Lettermen, and Moses. Approximately 60 percent of gifted children and 75 percent of highly gifted children are introverted.

  So what kind of person are you? An introvert or an extrovert? Most likely a bit of both. Most of us have both introverted and extroverted aspects of our personalities but tend to lean to one
type more than the other. It is rare to come across extreme extroverts or extreme introverts, although people with severe mental disorders and psychopathic tendencies are often found to be at the extreme ends of the scale. There are several websites that provide personality tests for determining your level of introversion. Based on that information, you can figure out how fast time runs in your mind. A good self-test that should not take more than 25 minutes to complete can be found at Psychology Today website. 90

  To explain the basis of these personality differences, in 1967, psychologist Hans Eysenck introduced the theory of arousal, in an influential book titled Dimensions of Personality. Dr. Eysenck found that introverts have chronically higher cortical (mental) arousal levels by nature, and are innately over-stimulated, which causes them to be easily overwhelmed. This explains why they prefer activities that are more solitary. If you were to invite an introvert to a loud party, they would quickly become overloaded, causing them to mentally shut down. They avoid such active environments in an effort to reduce the influx of information. They may be motivated to pursue simpler activities such as reading or watching a movie to maintain balance in their mental arousal levels. Because of their higher arousal levels, they tend to be edgy, tense, oversensitive, easily irritable, and always in a rush.