Why does the way back seems shorter

For sure you faced with a paradox: the road back takes less time than the road there, even though you know it's been the same amount of time. New research has shed light on the mysteries of this effect and explain why we value time differently.

For such complex beings we are too bad to evaluation time. Especially in the short period of time - seconds, minutes, hours. Our evaluation depends on subjective factors, the mood and what we do.

This subjectivity leads to some very strange phenomena, including the one when the road back seems shorter. In English, there is a concept return trip effectWhich can be translated into Russian as the effect of the feedback of the road.

When we go to a new place, and then come back out, it seems to us that the road back takes much less time, even though we went / drove the same distance.

New studyPublished in the journal Plos One, adds weight to this phenomenon.

Japanese researchers asked respondents to see the 20-minute film in which the operator walks around the city with a camera. Test requested by eye to determine when the three minutes will pass, and talk about it to researchers.

One group of respondents followed by the operator walked from point S to point E and then returned by the same route (left image). The second looked to it as an operator comes on the same route, but returns back along the new road (right image).

The researchers wanted to understand how we define the time without a watch, and the results in both groups were different. The time taken on the path to the destination, all respondents were determined similarly. When they were asked to assess the way back, the group in which the operator was moving in a circle, felt that it took less time than the group that "traveled" back the other way.

how writes Vox Editor Joseph Stromberg, a similar effect can be associated with storytelling - by delivering information through experience and memory. The bottom line is that the effect of the back roads can occur only if you know what walks back.

Psychologists believe that the effect occurs for two reasons:

1. Moving to the destination, you can be late, so take the time much more attention. this does not happen the reverse way.
2. Going back, you see familiar places. Because of this, you feel more comfortable, and time moves faster.

But this explanation can hardly be called comprehensive. In 2011, Neil van de Ven spent study. He asked two groups of cyclists ride different routes. One group went back and forth on the same road, the second - in different ways. Both groups experienced the effect of turning back.

The researchers concluded:

People are too optimistic about the road, because of this, it takes more time. However, on the way back, they overestimate their expectations, and so it seems that the path lasts less.

turning back effect may occur for each of these factors alone or because their entirety. So far, researchers have only trying to understand the nature of the effect, as we continue to perceive time differently, despite the logic and clock.