When we are young, time seems to pass more slowly than when we are adults. Similarly, during times of boredom, time appears to stretch indefinitely. Can time really change based on an individual’s feelings and state of mind?
Ratio Theory
People perceive the speed of time depending on their age.
Most people feel that time passes very slowly when we are children, and gradually speeds up as we grow older. Surveys conducted by psychologists indicate that adults feel time passes faster compared to when they were young, by about half or a quarter.
The feeling that time suddenly moves faster leads to the telescoping phenomenon, where individuals believe that past events occurred more recently than they actually did. For instance, a child who is now 18 might feel that their first day of kindergarten was just yesterday.
Ratio Theory is a popular explanation for the sensation of accelerating time. Studied by scientist Paul Janet in 1877, this theory describes the perceived thickness of a period of time at a certain point in a person’s life as directly proportional to the total length of their life.
In simple terms, as people age, each period of time becomes a smaller portion of their entire life. For example, a 10-year-old child perceives one year as 1/10 of their life, while a 50-year-old man perceives one year as 1/50, even though a year remains unchanged.
Additionally, there are biological theories regarding the acceleration of time. Some suggest that the speeding up of time correlates with the slowing metabolic processes in the body as a person matures, since children’s hearts beat faster than those of adults.
From a biological perspective, there is also a theory that human perception of time speed is influenced by body temperature. In the 1930s, psychologist Hudson Hoagland conducted numerous experiments demonstrating that body temperature causes different perceptions of time.
This idea stemmed from an incident when his wife fell ill with the flu. After he left the house for a short while, she complained that he was gone too long without caring for her. Hoagland then tested his wife’s perception of time at different temperatures and found that higher temperatures made people feel time passed more slowly.
The results indicated that an increase in a person’s body temperature can slow their sense of time by up to 20%. Notably, children have higher body temperatures than adults, which means they perceive time as moving more slowly than adults do.
Perception Theory
Children often perceive time passing faster than adults.
Dr. Steve Taylor, a psychology lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, argues that the perception of time is related to perception theory. The increase or decrease of time depends on an individual’s perception and experiences of the surrounding world.
The speed of time is largely determined by the amount of information the human mind absorbs and processes. The more information a person takes in, the slower time seems to pass. This relationship was also demonstrated by psychologist Robert Ornstein in the 1960s.
Ornstein played audio tapes with varying levels of information to a group of volunteers and asked them to estimate how long they had been listening. Tapes with less information made them estimate time as shorter, while those filled with noise and information made them feel they had listened longer, despite both tapes being of equal length.
This also holds true in relation to the complexity of information. When viewing paintings, volunteers estimated that they spent more time on detailed artworks than on less detailed ones, even when the viewing time allowed was the same. Thus, time seems to pass more slowly for children due to their limited capacity to absorb information.
Conversely, as people age, they lose the heightened intensity of perception they had in youth, making the world feel dull and familiar. When encountering beautiful scenes, adults no longer express as much wonder because they have seen and heard it all before.
They gradually stop paying attention to their surroundings, and experiences become less novel. As a result, adults absorb less information, leading to time seeming to pass more quickly.
Once we become adults, there is a gradual process of becoming accustomed to our environment that continues throughout life. The longer a person lives, the more familiar the world becomes. Therefore, the amount of perceptual information we absorb decreases each year, making time seem to pass faster each year.
Another principle is that “time passes quickly in states of absorption.” When in a state of absorption, human attention narrows to a small focal point, blocking out information from the surrounding environment. Simultaneously, our minds receive very little information because they are focused on specific areas.
On the other hand, time passes slowly in states of boredom and discomfort because, in these situations, individuals loosen their attention, allowing thoughts to flow through their minds, carrying a large amount of cognitive information. This can lead to feelings of discomfort.
However, not everyone feels that time speeds up as they age. The perception of time is relatively dependent on how individuals live their lives and how we relate to the experiences we accumulate.
