{"id":20948,"date":"2020-06-10T20:56:05","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T20:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=20948"},"modified":"2020-06-11T16:39:08","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T16:39:08","slug":"the-stay-at-home-slowdown-how-the-pandemic-upended-our-perception-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-stay-at-home-slowdown-how-the-pandemic-upended-our-perception-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The stay-at-home slowdown \u2013 how the pandemic upended our perception of time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Gable<\/a>, University of Delaware<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Think back to life before stay-at-home orders. Does it feel like just yesterday? Or does it seem like ages ago \u2013 like some distant era?<\/p>\n

Of course, time is precise. It takes 23.9 hours<\/a> for the Earth to make one rotation on its axis. But that\u2019s not how we experience time. Instead, internally, it\u2019s often something we feel or sense, rather than objectively measure.<\/p>\n

It turns out our emotional state tends to play a big role in our perception of time \u2013 a dynamic that I\u2019ve studied<\/a> for 10 years. Much research has shown that relative to an emotional negative state<\/a>, a positive one makes time appear to pass more quickly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back in the early days of the pandemic, when it became clear that the virus would upend our everyday lives, it wasn\u2019t a stretch to assume that the coming weeks and months would be an emotional roller coaster.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation<\/a>, my team and I developed a smartphone application to document the emotions, perceptions and behaviors of Americans<\/a> during the pandemic on a month-by-month basis. We\u2019ve been able to track the extent to which Americans\u2019 internal clocks went haywire \u2013 and explore why this might have happened.<\/p>\n

The turbulence of time<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s truth<\/a> to the aphorism \u201ctime flies when you\u2019re having fun.\u201d On the other hand, the opposite seems to occur when we\u2019re scared, sad or anxious. For example, people often remark how car wrecks or accidents seem to happen in slow motion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why does this happen?<\/p>\n

Emotion and motivation are intertwined. Emotion compels us to act in certain ways, whether it\u2019s diving into a project when we\u2019re excited or hiding when we\u2019re terrified. The former is called \u201capproach motivation,\u201d while the latter is called \u201cavoidance motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n

My team and I have been able to show<\/a> how
\napproach motivation causes our sense of time to speed up, but avoidance motivation causes it to slow down. The more motivation we feel in either direction, the more pronounced the change in our perception of time.<\/p>\n

This happens for a reason. When we\u2019re motivated to do something, we have a goal in mind, whether it\u2019s finishing a puzzle or evading a car that\u2019s blown a red light.<\/p>\n

The speeding or slowing of time may help us achieve these goals. When time passes more quickly, it makes it easier to pursue a goal for a longer period of time. Think about a hobby you enjoy and how time passes more quickly when you\u2019re engaged with it.<\/p>\n

In contrast, when avoidance motivation is triggered, time slows down to prevent us from lingering in potentially harmful situations. If time seems like it\u2019s dragging when you\u2019re frightened or disgusted, you\u2019ll act more quickly to get yourself out of harm\u2019s way.<\/p>\n

Our pandemic clocks<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s this avoidance situation that many of us found ourselves in at the beginning of the pandemic. There was this threat that we wanted to evade, but since we couldn\u2019t see it, we were left trying to avoid a range of potentially harmful situations. Because these included routine activities like shopping and exercising, our avoidance motivation was constantly triggered.<\/p>\n

If you felt like time slowed down during the early days of the pandemic, you weren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

In April, we asked 1,000 Americans how time seemed to be passing during March. About half said they felt time dragged and a quarter indicated that time passed more quickly than normal. The remaining quarter reported that they didn\u2019t experience a change in the passage of time.<\/p>\n

Whether time slowed or sped up was most closely related to people\u2019s emotions. Those who reported that they were most nervous or stressed also indicated that time passed more slowly, while those who felt happy or glad tended to experience time passing more quickly.<\/p>\n

Our findings also revealed that people who tended to experience the slowing of time practiced social distancing more often. So while time slowing down might be an unpleasant side effect of anxiety and avoidance, the behaviors did end up benefiting society.<\/p>\n

In April, about 10% of our sample moved from feeling like time dragged to feeling like time flew. More people were feeling relaxed and calm, and interestingly, it was these positive feelings, along with the perception of time flying, that predicted whether people would engage in social distancing. So it\u2019s possible that people\u2019s improved mood and the shift in their perception of time motivated their willingness to socially distance.<\/p>\n

Still, there was a big chunk who felt \u2013 and probably still feel \u2013 that time is dragging.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, if you feel this way, you can do something about it. Exercise<\/a>, hobbies and a routine help speed up your perception of time. Sure, it might not \u201cfly by,\u201d but its pace could quicken just enough to make you feel a little better.<\/p>\n

[You\u2019re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation\u2019s authors and editors.<\/em> You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Philip Gable<\/a>, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Delaware<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Gable, University of Delaware Think back to life before stay-at-home orders. Does it feel like just yesterday? Or does it seem like ages ago \u2013 like some distant era? Of course, time is precise. It takes 23.9 hours for the Earth to make one rotation on its axis. But that\u2019s not how we experience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":20949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[1789,8177,7559,730,1790,4151,447,228,6450,3621],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20957,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20948\/revisions\/20957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}