In the beginning of the pandemic, stay-at-home orders may have left some feeling as though time had stalled.
To better understand how individuals’ perceptions of time changed throughout the pandemic, Brazilian researchers conducted an online survey.
They found different phases of the pandemic corresponded with feelings of “time expansion” and “time pressure.”
As the months living with COVID-19 turned into years living with COVID-19, to many it may have seemed like time slowed down due to the monotonous routine of staying at home and avoiding social contact.
New research published in Science Advances lends some credence to that common feeling, as investigators found the COVID-19 pandemic has altered how people perceive the passage of time.
Researchers from Brazil followed 3,855 volunteers who filled out questionnaires after the first 60 days of social distancing and every week thereafter for 15 weeks. Participants also completed a button-pressing task to document their ability to sense duration, a metric that did not change over the course of the pandemic.
Ninety percent of those included were sheltering at home during the first months of the pandemic. However, only 900 participants who answered questionnaires for at least four weeks were included in the final analysis.