Why time is felt in different ways
A Life / / December 19, 2019
Why, when we stand in the queue, time flows more slowly? And when to rest and have fun, on the contrary, faster? In this article we will talk about time paradoxes, and how the brain affects the perception of time.
I recently moved into a new apartment. It so happens that it is on the 24th floor. For obvious reasons, every day you have to ride the elevator. However, once I finally tried to climb the stairs, and even spotted the time - it took five minutes. I do not know why I wrote it.
I'll be back to the elevator. A few days later, I began to notice that the time in the elevator when you're driving alone and when with strangers, felt differently. I realized that this is due to an awkward silence and the desire to quickly get out of the closed space, which you share with a stranger. But I was curious:
In our lives enough situations where time flows then faster, then slower. Why it happens?
Naturally, when we stand in the queue, in the elevator or just doing something uninteresting, while not slowing down. As well as the interesting moments do not pass quickly. But something is changing, it is no wonder it seems that time really flows differently.
It is changing our perception of time. For example, people who have ever been in an emergency, and remember that if everything is slowed down and switched mode slow motion (Lapse shooting). This cognitive error to help us respond more quickly to events.
And time slows down in the same way, not only in situations where we are on the brink of life and death, but also when experiencing strong emotions of fear or disgust. Claudia Hammond, author of the book Time WarpedHe recalls an experiment in which the test subject suffering from arachnophobia, spiders shown for 45 seconds and then asked to say how much time passed. The vast majority of name figures on the order of more than 45 seconds.
Sometimes the time passes quickly. And not always a good thing. For example, many people in adulthood suggests that time is moving faster than a child. This is easily explained by the theory of proportionality:
Time goes faster when you are 40 years old, because it is only one-fortieth (1/40) of the total time lived. While in the eight-year child, it is one-eighth (1/8).
However, the proportionality theory does not hold water. According to Hammond, we can not assess the day or week as a single unit of time. In this case, for the day forty man would turn in a flash, because they are equal to 1/14 of all 000 of its life.
One day can be as boring or fun in 40 years, as in eight. Proportionality theory ignores factors such as emotions and absent-mindedness of man.
Claudia Hammond therefore had to look for another theory to explain why age time goes faster. The answer is also found the cognitive distortion called "telescope effect". The hypothesis linking the distinctness of memories and an estimate of when they occurred, for the first time expressed the psychologist Norman Bradburn:
The less we remember what happened in the last event, the more we believe that it occurred earlier than it actually is.
However, Hammond turned explain another very interesting paradox associated with travel. Why does the rest time we think that the time flies by, but, looking back, we realize that it is not?
Everyday life - a list of the usual events that flow in a normal rhythm. Resting, we get a large flow of new sensations, because of what seems to us that time passes faster.
deceleration and acceleration time paradox in our mind - this is a very interesting phenomenon. We can not control it and is unlikely to learn in the future. This is another unusual survival mechanism, which does not always work the way you want, but without which we would not be human beings in the conventional sense.