Time is a well-accepted concept in society. I never thought to question its credibility or how our vision of time could be so wrong in the scheme of the universe. That is, until I read Slaughterhouse-Five, a fictional war novel written by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. For those who have never read the novel, an alien-like group called Tralfamadorians believe that at every moment we are living in the past, present, and future. I researched on the internet to find a more scientific and less fictional explanation for the phenomenon we call “time” and came across an analysis of a psychology novel called “Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception” by Claudia Hammond.

Hammond claims that emotion constitutes one’s perception of time. Specifically, fear slows down our perception of time. To test out her theory, she put someone with a fear or spiders in one’s presence for a given time and then asked the individual to estimate how long that occurred. The same was done for a skydiver who watched his friend do it and then estimated the time it took for him to reach the ground. In both instances, the individuals estimated a time far longer than had actually passed.

Hammond carried out the experiments in an intelligent manor but from the article, I could not tell how large the experimental group of skydivers and people afraid of spiders was. In addition, Hammond should have tested a control group of people who did not have those fears and recorded their estimated time frame as well. Based on Hammond’s hypothesis, there is a correlation between fear and an elongated perception of time but without adding that control group, there is no way it could be considered causal. Another thought I have is that if one feels that they are doing something for an elongated period of time, they could possibly become afraid. For instance, most people are not afraid of elevators. But if one gets stuck in an elevator for what they believe is a longer time than has actually passed, they would probably become increasingly fearful. In this case, reverse causality could not be ruled out.

The entire concept of time is psychological. I would like to see some connection to brain stimulation or activity to strengthen this correlation. Recently, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been able to “identify emotions based on brain activity” for the first time. While I will not discuss the process used to determine this, you can click on this link to read into it. But using this process could solidify Hammond’s hypothesis that fear elongates one’s perception of time.

Sources:

• Carnegie Mellon University. “Scientists identify emotions based on brain activity.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 June 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130619195137.htm>.
• Popova, Maria. “Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on Vacation.” Brain Pickings RSS. Brain Pickings, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2014. <http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/>.