Time: Friend or Foe?

‘If you can fill the unforgiving minute; With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run’ – If, Rudyard Kipling (1910).

Let us pause for a minute to think about how long sixty seconds seem to last for us when we are racing against time to answer a final exam question, for a cyclist who’s about to fall flat on his face, or for a driver who’s about to crash into a pedestrian. All these scenarios have one thing in common: time seems to slow down. In these moments, it seems as if you capture everything in sight – from the specks of dust particles floating in the air to the slowly forming horrified expression of shock on the pedestrian’s face. It seems as if you have been given more time to react to the crisis unfolding before you. But is that truly the case? This is exactly what Eagleman, Fiesta and Stetson (2007) based their research on. They hypothesized that if ‘time slowed down’ during moments of perceived emergencies, we would be able to read at a rate faster than we normally can. During a 46-metre fall, participants were made to read an LED screen strapped to their arm that had two numbers flickering on it at a rate slightly faster than the participants could normally read at. The percentage of correct digits reported was much lower than expected – almost identical to the results of the non-falling condition. However, the participants felt as if their fall took longer than the actual duration. These results have shown that in emergencies, while one’s perception of time increases, time itself does not slow down and no more reaction time is granted to you than in any other situation.

While it’s disappointing to realize that I will never be able to emulate Wonder Woman’s slow-motion fighting techniques, it is interesting to know why we perceive time as slowing down in these adrenaline-filled moments. Previously, the apparent slowing down of time was attributed to a spike in adrenaline. However, according to the findings by Cavanagh, Intriligator, Rivest and Tse (2004), this phenomenon is due to an increase in the rate of information uptake. They found that when faced with an emergency, our increased attention to the situation results in an increase in information being encoded. We register more elements in our surroundings which leads us to perceive the moment as lasting longer than it actually does. Similarly, Arstila (2012) supported this theory by reasoning that the increase in the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which is released during such situations of threat, improves our focus and working memory functions. This increases our perception of our surroundings and hastens the rate of response of our neurons. The question we then turn to is why we sense time as slowing down in emergencies. Perhaps this illusion is a by-product of a mechanism designed to increase our chances of survival. From an evolutionary point of view, the increase in attention to details could help us better plan our next move in that dire situation, which could ultimately save a person’s life. For instance, the driver noticing a clear spot beside him where he could safely swerve his car into, to avoid hitting the pedestrian.

A theory by Taylor (2014) proposes that we enter a different state of consciousness (e.g. during meditation or when consuming psychedelic drugs) as opposed to our usual state of consciousness when we perceive time ‘normally’. You may be wondering why I placed quotation marks around the word ‘normally’. The fact of the matter is that time is merely a construct of the human mind that could potentially be easily manipulated and controlled by us or by others. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we experience moments in which time appears to be distorted. As cognitive psychology has shown us, perception is subjective to each person and it’s an amalgamation of factors that come together to let us form an idea of the world we experience. We can be misled by cues to believe in things that deviate greatly from reality. For instance, the ventriloquist effect causes us to perceive the voice as originating from the puppet rather than the puppet master. Another example is the false perception that we remember a traumatic event better than any other event. Similarly, our perception of time can be misled as seen in the apparent slowing down of time.

Another interesting phenomenon related to the idea of time slowing down is our perception of time speeding up as we get older. When you were a child, didn’t it feel as if a day lasted a month, a month lasted a year and a year was nearly an eternity? Now when you look back on 2018, does it not feel as if the year went by in the blink of an eye? If any of this sounds familiar to you, it’s because of our fickle perception of time. As we grow older, new experiences shape us and we become more desensitized to experiences we have already encountered. This is called the ‘oddball effect’ which was explored by Eagleman and Pariyadath (2007). In this study, participants felt that the ‘odd’ photograph – shown amid a series of identical photographs – was shown for a longer time than its actual screen time. In addition, when shown a series of identical photographs, the first photograph observed was reported by participants as being shown for a longer time than the identical photographs that followed. This is known as the ‘debut effect’. The answer as to why these two effects happen lies in the way our neurons respond to new and old information. It appears that our neural firing rates decreases when exposed to information we have previously encountered, an occurrence known as repetition suppression. Due to this suppression, we may perceive similar events as lasting shorter than the actual duration. Therefore, the more familiar experiences we re-encounter, the faster time seems to pass. When we were children, we encountered many new experiences, but as adults, few things remain novel to us, making it seem as if our days pass by much quicker than they used to.

Since there seems to be no clear, functional reason for this feeling of running out of time, the question that remains is how we can use this information to alter our perception of time to our advantage. The most obvious strategy, based on the theories discussed, would be to do one new thing every day. This could be anything, ranging from reading a new book, to talking to a stranger, to simply taking a different path to school or work. The more you explore, the more new experiences you encounter, the longer your days may seem. Personally, a strategy I like to employ is to disengage from social media (this includes WhatsApp). Have you ever experienced being on your phone and after what felt like five minutes, thirty minutes had passed? Well, I have. The constant connectivity and engagement with the digital world can be overwhelming and unknowingly time-consuming at times. Reducing my social media usage made me realize where all those chunks of time went to – time that could have been spent with friends, exercising or exploring Amsterdam. Lastly, we could adopt habits that increase mindfulness, such as taking breaks to clear one’s mind, engaging in meditation, or having some quiet time in the morning to gather oneself in preparation for the day. The more aware we are of our surroundings, the more information we may encode, and thus, the slower time may seem to pass (Cutler, 2015).

All in all, the idea that time slows down during emergencies and speeds up when we get older can largely be explained by the trickery of environmental cues and the way information is selected to be encoded in our brain. At the end of the day, time is neither friend nor foe. It is simply a concept we have come up with to mark our days. It matters not the rate at which time seems to pass but rather, what we do with the time we have. When I was a child, my dad put up a poster on my wall which stated to take each day one step at a time; not to worry about the future because that has yet to come, and not to dwell on the past because that has already passed. Essentially, we just have to make the best of the time that has been given to us. <<