The mind does funny things to our experience of time. Just ask French cave expert Michel Siffre.
In 1962 Siffre went to live in a cave that was completely isolated from mechanical clocks and natural light. He soon began to experience a huge change in his experience of time.
When he tried to measure out two minutes by counting up to 120 at one-second intervals, it took him 5 minutes. After emerging from the cave he guessed the trip had lasted 34 days. He’d actually been down there for 59 days. His experience of time was rapidly changing. From an outside perspective he was slowing down, but the psychological experience for Siffre was that time was speeding up.
But you don’t have to hide out in a cave for a couple of months to warp time, it happens to us all the time. Our experience of time is flexible; it depends on attention, motivation, the emotions and more. The 10 listed in the following article are: Life-threatening situations, having fun, the stopped clock illusion, tiredness, regulating emotions, hypnosis and drugs, your age, negative feelings, body temperature and your own individual “tempo”.
For full explanations of all 10 head over to PsyBlog
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Number 11:
Watching a kettle boil
First! Muhaha
It depends on your perspective – time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, because your attention is distracted (too busy) to notice time elapsing. However, in retrospect, it seems longer because you remember more (novel or exciting experiences) in that time. Conversely, when you’re bored, time drags because your attention is under-utilised and you can track every second of time elapsing. In retrospect, the time seems far shorter, because few significant events were recorded, and non-significant events get thrown away.
so we still think we’re only living to 40, eh?
let’s do the time warp again…
We’ve just learnt about Michel Siffre, yesterday in psychology. I wonder if you posted this, Phillis, because you know some A level students are studying it at the moment? Probably just a coincidence he he
Try invigilating at an exam for 3 hours
Number 12:
Internet speed
Time feels slow when your in an exam but they year overall seemed to have gone very quickly, too quickly for me.
Time defnetely slows down when you listen to music. it feels like i spend hours on the bus listening to music when i head to school…