Emotion and Time Perception: Effects of Film-induced Mood

Abstract

In everyday life, the experience of an emotional state changes our perception of time. When we are sad and depressed, we feel that time passes more slowly. Every hour seems like an eternity. However, the feeling of fear seems to accelerate time. An hour seems to be nothing. Previous research into emotion and time perception has been designed to study the time percept of emotional events themselves (e.g., facial expression) using normative stimuli from databases (Coan & Allen, 2007). However, these studies have investigated the timing of emotional events themselves rather than the effect of emotional states (mood). The non-temporal characteristics of the emotional stimuli have been interfering with the processing time. Our aim was to investigate the effect of emotions per se on the subsequent time judgment of a neutral event. We used an induction technique of emotion that had not been used in studies of the perception of time. The participants were presented with films inducing a specific mood and were given two temporal bisection tasks, before and after viewing the film. Three emotional films validated by Schaefer et al. (2011) were used: eliciting fear, sadness, and neutral. In addition, the direct mood experience was assessed using the Brief Mood Introspective Scale (BMIS) that was administered to the participants at the beginning and the end of the session. Our hypothesis was that after having watched neutral films, the perception of time will not change. In contrast, presentation times will be perceived as longer after watching films of high arousal (fear) and as shorter for low arousal (sadness) clips. The results showed that timing did not change after viewing either the neutral or sad film, even though participants reported being sadder and less aroused after viewing. In contrast, the stimulus durations were judged longer after viewing the frightening films that were judged to increase the emotion of fear and the level of arousal. In combination with findings from previous studies, our data suggest that the selective lengthening effect after watching frightening films was mediated by an effect of arousal on the speed of the internal clock.