One possible reason for this has to do with the way the brain uses the concept of space to perceive time. Recall from Chapter 1 that we can only think about time in terms of space and distance, such as “the meeting was long,” or “the weekend was short,” or “the war is behind us.” Due to this inextricable connection, our brain perceives time periods in the same way it perceives areas within a space. A well-known optical illusion reveals that a shape will appear larger when filled by a number of distinct elements than when it is empty. 133 In the same way, a time interval filled with intense mental activity that generates lots of memories will seem longer when later recalled than an empty interval of the same duration. 134
“Capturing and storing complex and novel information causes remembered durations to appear longer”
Likewise, when you are engaged in an activity that is segmented into several parts, the duration will appear longer than if the activity was one continuous chunk. To test this, researchers at Arizona State University prepared two kinds of tape recordings consisting of 27 nouns and the names of three U.S. presidents. Both recordings lasted 170 seconds. One recording was non-segmented and had all three presidents' names appear first, followed by the 27 nouns. The second recording was segmented into three parts with the three presidents' names appearing in positions 10, 20, and 27. The researchers asked students estimate the duration of the recording and found that they judged the non-segmented recording to be shorter than the segmented one, even though both recordings were the same duration. The reason is that segments create memory markers that are easily stored and later retrieved, so the segmented recording appears longer. In short, remembered durations are a function of the quantity, complexity, and intensity of information processed during those intervals of time.
This has some significant real-life implications on how to control the subjective speed of time. When you have no choice but to go through routine or mundane activities (like doing your laundry or cleaning the house), you might want to get through it without any breaks so as to create the least number of memory markers. Every time you stop for a break between chores, you remember the chores you have just done and think ahead to what you still have to do, which makes it feel like they are taking all day. Whereas if you do them without a break, you do not reflect on what has come before or will come next and, with fewer memory markers, you will feel it is over quickly. On the other hand, if you are enjoying a fun activity or vacation and want to later remember that pleasant time as being long, you would want to segment it into smaller parts and savor every moment for the longest possible time. It is like eating a delicious chocolate cake bit-by-bit so that it feels like it lasted longer. To recall your vacation as having lasted for a long time, you should mentally split it into smaller parts; the time you visited that landmark place, the time you had dinner in that special restaurant, the water sport activity you did in the morning, and so on. You would then store as many mental snapshots as you possibly can, creating more memory markers in your mind that, in retrospect, will make your vacation seem longer than it really was.
“Remembered durations are a function of the quantity, complexity, and intensity of information processed during those intervals of time”
The combined remembered durations of past events affect how long you perceive last month, last year, or even the last decade to have been. If, for instance, you feel that last year went by very quickly, it may be due to the lack of any significant memory markers, or it could be that the memories you collected during that year faded. You might initially recall rich memories, for instance, from the adventure you had on a recent camping trip. But after a year, what is left of the trip in your mind does not amount to much more than a couple of mental snapshots. As years go by, the whole trip will barely leave a trace and might even be completely forgotten. It’s like you were never there. This is similar to childhood memories that are gradually mostly lost, as if we never lived those first few years. The question, then, is whether there are ways to keep pleasant memories intact in our minds for longer, and whether there is a way that we can remember unpleasant times as being shorter than they actually were.
Maintaining Memories: Novelty and Routine
The key to maintaining memories lies with the degree of novelty. It is not only the quantity or complexity of mental snapshots that defines how we remember time intervals, but also how novel the captured information is. As confirmed by the great American Psychologist William James, “the awareness of change is the condition on which our perception of time’s flow depends.” The change can be of any sort, from changes in context to changes in mood, or it could be in the form of new experiences, which would create more memory markers. The perceived duration of a remembered event depends on the number of changes observed and recalled from memory. If the information within an interval of time is new and constantly varying, the brain will record more snapshots and that time interval will appear longer. When it is familiar and monotonous, the brain will perceive no change, record fewer snapshots, and that time interval will appear shorter.
This helps us understand why the duration of novel activities feels longer than the duration of routine ones. A typical example is a two-hour flight, which might feel like four hours to someone who has never taken a plane, whereas it might feel like half an hour for a frequent flyer. This difference in time perception was confirmed by studies in which researchers found that routine flyers felt safer and reported time passing more quickly during flights than it did for the people who fly less often. 135 Or consider the mundane daily experience of commuting or driving back and forth from home to your workplace. You do it so regularly that the buildings, street signs, and landmarks become so familiar that they are no longer register in your memory. Your brain recorded these snapshots on the first couple of trips until the route back home became routine and, in order to conserve energy, your brain lost interest in capturing those scenes. Driving becomes a subconscious “auto-pilot” skill that requires minimal attention. Sometimes you suddenly find yourself in front of your house and don’t recall how you got there. Contrast the daily commute to work with taking a trip somewhere you have never been before. The duration of the trip will seem longer on the way there because of the novelty and excitement of visiting a new place, and so your brain will record all the details along the way. This might sound counter to what we saw before, where monotonous activities seem to take longer, but that is in relation to our experience of present passing time. As we shall see shortly, the opposite effect is experienced when we look back and perceive that time retrospectively.
“A time period seems longer if remembered in detail and shorter if remembered only in outline”
If you ever wondered why your work week goes by very quickly, the answer lies in the level of novelty you have in your life. When going through a routine day, a lot of the familiar information you encounter passes without being stored in your brain and is quickly forgotten. Your typical day might start at the same time every morning, where you eat the same breakfast, take the same route to work, sit behind a desk, and performing the same tasks you did yesterday. Your brain has already captured and processed those routine activities a hundred times and does not need to process any new information or remember any specifics. Your brain is working on auto-pilot. Moreover, the familiar daily routine does not provide any memory markers for judging time. When that day is recalled, fewer events are remembered and the day appears to have passed very quickly. Days slip into months and then into years, and before you know it, you are about to celebrate your 40th birthday and The Simpsons is already on Season 27!
Now imagine another day at work, but this time it is being spent in a training seminar in a mountain ski resort. You will feel that special day to be longer than usual due to the novel experiences and increased brain alertness. When that day is later recalled, it will also be rich with new memories, which will make that day seem longer. Our brain tends to retrospectively shrink empty or routine minutes, hours, and days while expa
nding action-packed and interesting ones. If your life is now nothing but a constant routine, when you look back at those years they will seem short. Introducing novelty in your life will give you richer memories and make your life seem longer.
A study on vacations provides evidence for the role of novelty on time perception. People who were checking-out of a hotel after having enjoyed a four-day vacation at a beach resort were asked to mentally divide their vacation into three equal parts: beginning, middle, and end, and then to assess which part seemed the shortest. Most participants reported the last part as being the shortest and the first part as the longest. The reason is that in the first couple of days, everything is new: the hotel, the pool, the guestroom. There were so many things to explore, all of which serve as memory markers. But once people became acquainted with the holiday routine, fewer memories were captured and that period seemed shorter. Therefore, to make your vacation last longer, it would make sense to spread the “new” experiences across the whole trip and always have something exciting to look forward to. In recalling the vacation later on, every part of it would have its share of memories, which will make it last longer in our mind.
One more thing to consider is that not all novel experiences are created equal. Novelty that involves active movement is more intense than passive novelty. Here is an example: spend one day on the couch watching TV, perhaps an entire season of something you have not seen before, so it contains a lot of novelty. Now spend one day exploring a new city on foot or on bike. Which day feels longer in retrospect? Which day was fuller and richer? Even though both introduced novel events, the physical movement injected intensity to the novel experiences and caused time to slow down in retrospect. This goes back to the types of fun we described in an earlier chapter and how active leisure can induce a mental state of flow that actually speeds up the experienced present time. While on a walking tour, you might be fully absorbed in the surroundings, so that the whole day passes without your being aware of how much time elapsed. However, at the end of the day, when that time is later recalled, you look back and feel you had breakfast ages ago. We will look at some of these time distortions that result when we try to compare the experienced duration of the present with the remembered duration of the past. But the key point here is that novelty in active leisure tends to create more memories than passive novelty, and will consequently stretch the remembered duration of an event.
Stretching the Past
If you have been through a rough period in your life and would like to recall that time as brief, you will want to forget as many details and memories from that period as possible. By reducing the number of negative memories, our brain will judge that unpleasant period to be shorter, in comparison with the good times we have had. Fortunately, evolution has equipped us with a coping mechanism that wipes away the negative aspects of bad memories and rebrands them in a more positive light. When you have a nightmare, your brain is effectively replaying a real-life negative experience but altering the memory to remove its sting. By intentionally rethinking what happened, you change the memory and fill the gaps with positive details. Over a period of time, the entire memory becomes harmless and is more or less forgotten. Other ways to deal with negative memories involve avoiding places or objects that trigger those memories. Psychologists also recommend focusing on what has been learned from that negative experience and rebranding it as beneficial wisdom.
Conversely, if you want to remember a good time in your life as being long, you will need to capture as many memories and details from that period as you can. But having a perfect memory capable of recalling every small detail of our lives is sadly not possible. Evolution did not allow us the capacity of unlimited memory because it is not critical to our survival. Squirrels, on the other hand, need to remember the location of vast quantities of nuts and have evolved a memory that is greater than our own. We humans will just have to be satisfied with an imperfect memory that allows important details to fade with time. In fact, our brains cannot remain efficient if we do not forget.
Nevertheless, despite this inevitable limitation, there are still ways to keep those good times fresh in our minds. One way is to use mental exercises to improve your short-term and long-term memory capacities. Self-help books on how to improve memory and develop a quicker way of retrieving information are readily available. It is also important to improve your emotional memory. This involves reliving how you felt at certain moments in the past. Were you happy, excited, proud, or overjoyed? It is not simply about recalling what happened but, more importantly, how you felt at that moment.
One tip offered by neurologist Richard Restak, is to reacquaint yourself with your emotions by writing a letter to your younger self. Let us say that you are now 40 years old. Start by finding a photo of yourself when you were 20 years old, half of your present age. Focus on it and think about where it was taken and what you were doing. Then, imagine you are your 20-year-old self and write a letter to your older self about the dreams you had, the things you wanted to achieve, your hopes and worries about the future. Follow that up with another letter from the “present you” to your younger self, telling the “younger you” all about their future—the things they will end up doing and who they will grow up to be. Through this simple exercise, you might discover feelings that you have not experienced in years, or you might expose memories that were long forgotten.
Another way to preserve memories is through social media, for example Facebook or Instagram. An exciting vacation that you took in some exotic place two years ago may have been rich with memories and mental snapshots. However, memories fade with time. But with social media, you can now store those memories on a timeline, creating snapshots that can be recalled at any time in the future. You no longer have to rely on your imperfect brain to preserve those memories and can instead easily recollect every detail of that vacation by browsing your Facebook or Instagram page. That vacation will never lose any of its richness and will always seem long. Using Facebook, you could pick a date at random and look at the photos of that time—the friends you were interacting with, or the “status updates” you were posting. You could relive the day your child was born, a Christmas gathering, that New Year’s party, your vacation to Paris, and even the more mundane memories. The richness of these memories will, when combined over long periods of time, stretch the months and years that make up your perceived life span and contribute to your overall life satisfaction.
To recap, our remembered durations depend on the amount, complexity, and intensity of memories stored from past events, as well as the degree of novelty and contextual change. The higher the number of snapshots in our memory, the longer the duration will seem when it is later recalled. The more novel and interesting the event, the more snapshots are stored and the longer that event appears to be, as if time slowed down. In contrast, the more familiar the event, the shorter that interval seems, as if time flew by.
With this in mind, let us explore some psychological time distortions that we experience in our daily lives and some additional practical applications that will help us in making good times feel longer and bad times feel shorter.
Time Distortions: Contrasting Present Time with the Past
In trying to explain his grand theory of relativity, Albert Einstein was allegedly reported to have said, “Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. Sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. That’s relativity.” While this quote is almost certainly apocryphal, it portrays quite accurately the kind of psychological distortions in perceived speed. However, there is another type of time distortion, and this occurs when we compare how long an activity seems to have lasted immediately after it has ended (prospectively), with how long it seems to have lasted when it is recalled a few days later (retrospectively). Let us look at a few examples.
Imagine you are at a corporate dinner, where you are bored and constantly checking your watch. Your attention to time will make it feel that it is passing excruc
iatingly slow. Now imagine an exciting dinner party where you meet many interesting people and are absorbed with their stories so that you lose track of time and before you know it, it is time to leave. A boring dinner party seems to drag while an interesting one races by. The time experience in both these examples is a prospective one. But what happens if we try to recall those two events a few days later? This retrospective time experience depends on the amount of memories we collected from that event. We will therefore judge the duration of the interesting dinner to be longer because more exciting and entertaining encounters took place, even though at the time, it felt like time flew. On the other hand, when we recall the boring dinner party a few days later, it will seem like it was shorter since there were barely any memories stored, even though at the time it dragged. We will then conclude that, in retrospect, the interesting party must have lasted longer than the boring one. As a result, our experience of time during the event is in conflict with our recollection after the event. The “experienced duration” does not match the “remembered duration” and this is the basis for time distortions which we experience almost every day.
The Power of Time Perception Page 17
