The covid-19 pandemic, which has already infected almost 510 million people and killed 6.2 million worldwide, altered the way people perceive the passage of timeBrazilian academic sources reported this Wednesday.
This is stated in a study published in the journal Science Advances, which states that social isolation measures that were adopted in much of the planet in 2020, during the first months of the pandemic, changed the perception of the passing of the hours.
The research, supported by the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (Fapesp), indicated that, at the end of May 2020, when the first month of distancing was completed in many Brazilian states, 65% of the participants he claimed have the feeling that the hours passed more slowly.
This phenomenon, classified by the authors of the study as "temporary expansion"was associated with "the feeling of loneliness" Y "to the lack of positive experiences" in that period.
On the other hand, for 75% the "time pressure"which is when it seems that the hours fly by.
"We accompanied the volunteers for five months to see if that photograph of the beginning of the pandemic changed over time"pointed out in a note André Cravo, professor at the Federal University of ABC (Sao Paulo) and first author of the article.
The results indicated that the sensation of “temporal expansion” diminished over the weeks, but there were no significant differences in relation to temporal pressure, according to Cravo.
To do this, they recruited 3,855 volunteers through social networks, who had to answer a series of questionnaires about daily routines and fulfill a task that consisted of estimating small intervals of time, pressing a button when they believed that 30 or 60 seconds had passed.
The final results of the study were extracted based on data from 900 people who participated more frequently in the research.
"Across five months we observed a similar pattern: in the weeks in which the individual felt more alone and experienced less positive affect, they also felt that time passed more slowly. Already in situations of high stress level, he felt that time passed quickly"Cravo explained.
According to the study, young people were the ones who most perceived that time was dilating at the start of the pandemic, months in which the measures were more rigid.
Brazil is, along with the United States and India, one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, with nearly 30.4 million infected and 663,111 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic.