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Time flies faster when you’re feeling blue: sad mood induction accelerates the perception of time in a temporal judgment task

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Abstract

Investigating the interaction of mood and time perception has provided key information in the mechanisms that underlie cognition and emotion. However, much of the literature that has investigated the role of emotions in time perception has focused on the valence of stimuli, or correlational studies of self-reported mood. In the present study, 31 healthy undergraduates completed a temporal judgment task before and after an autobiographical sad mood induction procedure. In the temporal judgment task, participants identified whether a presented neutral stimulus was onscreen for the same duration as a target (2 s). Along with target trials, very short (1.25 s), short (1.6 s), long (2.25 s), and very long (3.125 s) trials were presented in random order and in equal proportion. Following mood induction, ratings of sadness and fear increased, but returned to baseline at the end of the study. After the mood induction, participants significantly increased temporal overestimation as participants were more likely to affirm short than long-duration trials as matching the target. These results indicate that transient changes in mood in otherwise healthy adults can accelerate the subjective experience of time. Sadness may increase physiological components of time perception that are related approach motivation.

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Notes

  1. Non-response trials were infrequent: participants did not respond to an average of 5.4% of all trials (Mdn = 2.6%, SD = 8.6%).

  2. Controlling for fear and anger did not change significance for these main effects and interactions (ps < .05), and all significant post hoc analyses (ps < .01).

  3. For happiness, 75% of the sample marked the VAS ≥ 11.15 cm (55%) across the line. By comparison, 75% of the sample rated anger, fear, and sadness ≤ 4.8 cm (24%) across the line.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sabrina Gregersen, Alexander Fennell, Austin Svancara, Samyukta Dore, and Jonathan McCartin for their assistance in study preparation and data collection.

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No funding was obtained for this project, and the authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

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Correspondence to Erik M. Benau.

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Handling Editor: Benjamin Straube (University of Marburg).

Reviewers: Thomas Schaefer (Medical School Berlin), Darin R. Brown (Pitzer College).

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Benau, E.M., Atchley, R.A. Time flies faster when you’re feeling blue: sad mood induction accelerates the perception of time in a temporal judgment task. Cogn Process 21, 479–491 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-020-00966-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-020-00966-8

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