What is it about?
This research looks at how our emotions affect the way we feel time passing. We ran three studies with a total of 2,010 people at three points across a year: the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021, and the middle of 2021. In each study, we asked participants about their negative emotions in daily life (such as loneliness, anxiety, and depression), how easy or hard it was for them to remember what they had done over the past year, and how quickly they felt the past year had gone by. Across all three studies, we found a clear pattern: when people felt more negative emotions, they found it harder to recall their past experiences, and as a result, they felt that time had passed more quickly. In other words, difficulty remembering everyday events helped explain why negative emotions make time seem to fly by. These findings highlight an important link between emotions, memory, and our sense of time.
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Why is it important?
Understanding how emotions shape our sense of time helps us make sense of everyday experiences, such as why a difficult year can feel like it passed in a blur. When people feel anxious, lonely, or depressed, it may be harder for them to recall details from their daily lives, which can make large chunks of time seem to disappear. This matters because our sense of time is closely tied to how we reflect on our lives, set goals, and find meaning in our experiences. By showing that ease of retrieval plays a key role in how emotions influence time perception, this research offers insights that could help improve mental health support and remind us to stay present and engaged, especially during challenging times.
Perspectives
This research was inspired by my own experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when many of us felt time passing in strange and uneven ways. What began as a personal curiosity about how emotions shape our sense of time evolved into a deeper scientific inquiry. I am deeply grateful to the Bentley Center for Health and Business (CHB) for its generous support, which made this work possible. Conducting this project as a sole author has been a truly rewarding journey—one that allowed me to grow as an independent researcher and to learn from the thoughtful and constructive feedback provided by reviewers throughout the process.
Fei Gao
Bentley University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Ease-of-retrieval mediates the relations of negative emotional states and passage of time judgments, Acta Psychologica, August 2024, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104419.
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