Time perception and senses
Each of us has at least once encountered strange effects of the passage of time: for example, a walk along an empty and quiet street may seem longer than on a crowded and noisy one.
The perception of the usual route from work to home sometimes varies greatly: depending on our mood, on whether we listen to music on the way, whether we travel alone or in company, the same road will be endless or, on the contrary, quite short. The sense of time consists of information that comes from different senses and is processed by the brain. There are several models that explain the mechanism of time perception, but none of them has yet fully answered the questions of researchers and has not received wide recognition in scientific circles.
It is difficult to say exactly which bioalgorithms combine signals coming from outside and determining the functioning of the internal clock. However, it is known that auditory and visual data have different effects on the subjective sense of time. The pioneer of physiology Ivan Sechenov, and after him the neurophysiologist Alexander Luria, noted the priority of hearing in the perception of time.
This assumption has been experimentally confirmed by modern scientists: a person is able to more accurately estimate the duration of sounds than visual stimuli.
However, we tend to underestimate the duration of visual signals in contrast to auditory or vibration signals.
In a 2011 study, neuroscientist Ryota Kanai and his colleagues showed that disruptions in the areas of the brain responsible for hearing lead to errors when trying to judge the duration of both auditory and visual stimuli. If disturbances are found in the areas of the cerebral cortex responsible for vision, then errors in estimating the duration of external stimuli will concern only visual data. Scientists have suggested that time is recognized in the auditory system, and visual signals are automatically compared with sound signals.
What are the advantages of this theory?
So, as we have seen, changing beliefs means going the right way. Thus, we will always be open to new ideas, among which the best ones may turn out to be. Agree that we can never guess how true our initial theory will ultimately turn out to be. They say that truth is born only in disputes. It turns out that you can argue with yourself, with your inner self, and not only argue, but also derive great dividends from it.
Flow State and Anticipation of Reward
Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has dedicated his scientific career to the study of happiness. Perhaps he is best known as the author of the concept of flow - a state when a person is so deeply immersed in a process that no extraneous factors can distract him, and the sense of time is lost. It is possible to get into the stream provided that the difficulty level of the task is above average and the skill level is also above average.
Further research by scientists has revealed a connection between motivation, anticipation of reward and the perception of time. Psychologists Philip Gable and Brian Poole found that when waiting for a reward, minutes subjectively passed faster for participants in the experiment than in the absence of some pleasant event.
What to do to become happy
According to scientists, the “mighty efforts to forever move upward on the wave of happiness, to stay afloat,” described by Elizabeth Gilbert, just the opposite, make us less happy.
Of course, this is not a reason to avoid important life decisions that will positively affect your well-being. For example, leaving a toxic relationship or seeing a specialist for depression. Sometimes you really need to focus on your immediate well-being.
But if you haven't faced any serious adversities in life, try changing your attitude towards happiness. We spend a lot of time on social networks, and they increase our desire to live more interestingly. When in reality they are just a retouched version of someone's life. According to Maglio, we would be happier without looking at other people's standards of a fulfilling existence.
Constantly mentioning how someone went to an exotic destination or went to a luxurious dinner creates the feeling that other people are happier than you.
Research supports The Secret to Happiness: Feeling Good or Feeling Right? that in the long term, those who accept negative emotions rather than see them as enemies of their well-being experience greater life satisfaction.
“In the effort to be happy, you can become intolerant of the unpleasant things in life,” Moss says. “And scold yourself for feelings that are incompatible with happiness.” She advises to perceive negative emotions as fleeting phenomena and not try to completely eliminate them from life.
Of course, some small tricks improve your well-being and you shouldn’t give them up at all. For example, a gratitude journal and acts of kindness create positive feelings in the present moment. Just don't expect them to immediately or significantly change your mood. And don't go too deep into analyzing your feelings.
Remember that happiness is like a timid animal. Once you stop chasing it, you will find that it appears on its own.
Frozen Time
In 2012, scientists from Stanford and the University of Minnesota conducted a joint study: they asked a group of volunteers to watch several videos of breathtaking landscapes or videos in which eyewitnesses encountered wild animals in everyday life. The control group was shown a neutral video. According to subjective assessments, for the first category of participants, time passed faster and more intensely than for the second. Scientists believe that when we are fascinated or surprised by something, the moments seem to speed up.
The environment also contributes to the perception of time. According to researchers from Carleton University, time moves more slowly in nature. Scientists compared both the real situation of being in the forest and the impact on a person of images with views of nature. In each part of the experiment, participants noted that in an urban environment the pace of life felt faster. Moreover, in the situation of a real walk, the time distortion was stronger. Volunteers also noted that they felt more relaxed and calm in nature.
Psychological immunity: pros and cons
To better understand how the mechanism of “psychological immunity” works, let’s remember how we make predictions about events in which we are personally interested. For us, there are only two poles: everything will be very, very bad and everything will be just fine - in other words, we are simply not able to look at the situation without emotions. But let's assume that everything really ended in one of these two scenarios: we suffered a bitter defeat or were overtaken by incredible luck. Now life will change dramatically! But now the first emotions have subsided - and you feel almost nothing. “The end of the world” turned out to be not so scary, and “the greatest happiness on Earth” no longer brings any joy. This is the merit of “psychological immunity”: it helps us smooth out any emotions and move on with peace.
As a rule, such care of the brain is really useful, but history knows many examples when “psychological immunity” played a cruel joke on entire nations. It is he who is to blame for the fact that people have long tolerated openly cruel (or stupid) rulers and brutal regimes. But in emergency situations, even “psychological immunity” fails: hence the coups, revolutions and other upheavals that excessive stress pushes people into.
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Fear and other strong emotions
The connection between fear and the sense of time has received the most scientific work compared to other human emotions. Startle also demonstrates differences in the perception of visual and auditory stimuli.
Psychologist Anna Solodkova, in a text about research into time perception in modern psychology, writes:
“Disgust-inducing images (body mutilation) are rated as lasting longer than fear-inducing images (snake).”
Distortions in the perception of time are also characteristic of sound stimuli. The duration of exclamations uttered with different intonations will be subjectively felt differently: a phrase uttered with an intonation of disgust is perceived as shorter compared to the duration of a stimulus with a surprised intonation.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman conducted a landmark experiment in the early 2010s to study how fear distorts our perception of time. He placed stopwatches on the wrists of several volunteers and asked them to jump from a diving board as high as a fifteen-story building. As Eagleman expected, the brave participants in the study were confident that the jump lasted longer than the instruments actually showed.
According to scientists, this feature of perception may be associated with the instinct of self-preservation. When something threatens us, our brain switches to heightened attention mode and captures the smallest details.
In a 2011 study, psychologist Sylvie Droit-Volet showed a group of students several videos that were designed to make them scared (horror movies), sad (Hollywood dramas), or have no effect on their mood (weather forecasts or financial reports). After the session, she checked how the volunteers felt: the videos evoked in the subjects exactly the emotions that were expected. Before and after the session, Drois-Volet asked participants to estimate the duration of a visual stimulus (an image of a blue dot).
Watching a scary movie distorted the students' perception of the stimulus: it seemed to them that they saw the dot for longer than it was actually shown.
According to psychologists, this manifestation of anxiety is explained by the body’s readiness to act in the event of approaching danger.
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According to research by Sandrine Gil and Sylvie Droit-Volet, the facial expression of the interlocutor can also affect the perception of time. Seeing that the person opposite us is experiencing strong emotions - angry, scared, happy or sad - we tend to overestimate the number of minutes spent with him.
However, feelings of disgust or shame do not lead to time distortion. According to psychologists, the reason is simple: the fact that someone is disgusted does not require us to immediately react and be prepared to prevent potential danger.
What to do when you want change
There comes a certain point in life when you want change. What exists no longer suits and does not bring satisfaction. It’s not clear what you want.
As a rule, at this point there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Vulnerabilities. And also shame and intolerance towards oneself. An adult, but lost in three pines like a child. I don’t want to mark time, I want to quickly understand what’s wrong, what to change. You throw yourself into every new activity with hope, but over time you realize that everything is still empty inside. This hope drives you into an unknown distance, exhausts you, weakens you, which makes you even more bitter. It seems like I tried this and this, but nothing changes. It's not the same.
You constantly compare yourself with more successful peers. Some people got married for the second time, others had a third child. Someone is opening a third business. And everything you have is wrong. And the business was so-so, and the marriage never worked out. Friends... Where are they, friends? They only call when they need something.
You don’t compare yourself with those who rush around just like you. They have circumstances. Serious reasons to be on the search. But you can't do that. You must always be on top. It is difficult to admit that you are “at zero”. It’s hard to believe that you can’t jump out of the point you’re in in one go. Too deep.
However, to make changes in life, you first need to understand what exactly you are not happy with. But this place is not so easy to get to. There are many feelings there, often difficult to bear.
Fear. Allow yourself to be dissatisfied, to want a better life.
Guilt. My peers have already built a house and raised their sons, but I...
Shame. It’s a shame to find yourself helpless and confused.
Anger. Why didn’t I notice before that what I was doing was meaningless and unnecessary?
Anxiety. What if I stay stuck at this point? Can't find myself again?
By mastering and recognizing each of these feelings, it is possible to admit to yourself that a crisis is ripe in your life. Reading about a midlife crisis is one thing. Experiencing it is something else entirely. There are no supports. And those that exist seem flimsy and unreliable.
In our culture, it is not acceptable to be helpless and ignorant.
- "Stay calm and carry on!"
- “Stop whining, I’m sick of you with your whining!”
- “Maybe you’ll already settle on something, how much can you try and jump on top?”
You would be glad to get together. And I would be glad to stop whining. And I want to stop already. But there is no possibility. A huge amount of work is going on inside to complete an entire period of life. A period in which there was certainty, a place, clear schemes and reliable supports. It's scary to part with him. It's scary to face the unknown.
Any change is the beginning of something new. To start something, you need to complete something. And completion is associated with farewell, mourning. With living through what seems like an endless string of feelings. Without this, the transition to a new stage is impossible. It is impossible to set new goals, to understand what you really want.
Often this step is skipped. The bet is made on the future; you can give up on the past. But is it?
By not allowing oneself to fully live a farewell to what is important, a person dooms a part of himself to voluntary imprisonment in the prison of oblivion. Cuts it off. Doesn't notice, doesn't hear. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It exists and takes a huge part of the strength and energy to be imprisoned in the depths of consciousness. But the understanding of where you want to go still doesn’t come.
What to do when “you need to change something”?
First, understand what is happening at the “present” point. What exactly doesn’t suit you in relationships, in work, in friends. Honestly face your expectations - from yourself and from others. Understand which expectations are unrealistic and which simply cannot be met in specific circumstances.
Secondly, live through disappointment. What happened is what happened. That life turned out the way it did. That right here and now there is no way to get what you really want.
Thirdly, understand what you really want? New job or find your calling? New relationships or feel loved, needed, important? What is the very need that pushes you to explore yourself?
It's not an easy job. You can do it yourself, or you can do it in a therapeutic group. Take out your “cut off” part. Helpless, vulnerable, ashamed. Give her a voice. Let her talk about what is happening to her. What is she afraid of, ashamed of? Why does he feel guilty?
Being able to talk about it is healing. That is why there is such a great need for live communication now. In communication that is sensitive, understanding, accepting. Reflective. Giving you the opportunity to share experiences. To see that you are not alone with your confusion and helplessness. Hear other stories. Find a response within yourself. View from different focuses.
Why It's Normal to Lose Track of Time
Neuroscientist Heather Berlin studied the accuracy of human time perception in her master's and doctoral work. She was interested in how accurately we can determine how many minutes have passed, despite looking at the clock.
In one experiment, Berlin asked volunteers to mentally keep track of time while she read aloud to them numbers written in advance on cards. The subjects had to stop after 90 seconds. The study involved both healthy people and those who had damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, which is responsible for decision making and motivation.
Should a well-formed point of view be abandoned?
Everything we talked about above does not mean that a person does not need to have a clearly formed strategy, principle of action and point of view. On the contrary, by doing so we create a certain base for ourselves, an impetus for further development, a framework. Having a well-formed point of view, we are calm about today and confident that no external interference will be able to throw us off course. Nevertheless, we must prepare for the fact that tomorrow our vision of the problem may be completely revised.
Having and maintaining only one point of view is as irrational as being obsessed with small details. In the first case, a person spends most of his time on delusions and mistakes, and in the second he cannot consider the integrity of the picture.
How to learn how to install or return them?
You need to listen to yourself. If something bothers you or you don’t like, talk it out to the person. Discuss your conditions. This is where effective communication skills would help. If the person does not change his behavior, distance yourself or do not communicate with him at all.
— Respect your boundaries above all. Tell yourself that this cannot happen to you. It happens that, due to low self-esteem, people tolerate poor treatment of themselves and are dissatisfied with their social status, appearance or financial situation. But that's not really a "good reason" to allow others to treat you badly, Baljeed argues.
