It may seem like a science fiction movie effect, however, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way people perceive the passage of time. This is what a Brazilian study published in the journal Science Advances points out, with the support of the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP).
At the end of the first month of social isolation, in May 2020, most participants (65%) reported feeling the hours drag on more slowly – a phenomenon classified by the researchers as “temporal expansion” and which was associated with the feeling of loneliness. and the lack of positive experiences in the period.
For 75%, the feeling of “time pressure” decreased – when the clock seems to go fast and there is no time to fulfill the demands of everyday life and for leisure. The vast majority of respondents (90%) said they were complying with social isolation during that period.
“We followed the volunteers for five months to see if this ‘picture’ of the beginning of the pandemic would change over time. We observed that this sense of temporal expansion diminished over the weeks. But we did not notice significant differences in relation to time pressure”, says Professor André Cravo, from the Federal University of ABC and first author of the article.
The survey began on May 6, 2020, when 3,855 volunteers recruited via social media answered an online questionnaire with ten questions. Participants also performed a small task aimed at assessing the ability to estimate small time intervals – something like pushing a button to signal that 30 or 60 seconds had passed.
Then, the participants were asked about the routine of the previous week (if they had completed the necessary tasks and how much they had dedicated to leisure) and how they were feeling (happy, sad, lonely, etc.).
“Everyone was invited to come back weekly for a new assessment, but not everyone joined. For the final analysis, we considered data from 900 participants who responded to the questionnaire for at least four weeks, not necessarily in a row,” says Cravo.
Using standardized scales for surveys of this type, ranging from zero to 100 points, the scientists analyzed the responses and calculated, week by week, whether there was an increase or decrease in the two parameters evaluated: expansion and temporal pressure.
“In addition to this rise or fall in scales, we wanted to find out what factors accompanied the changes. And, over the five months, we observed a similar pattern: in the weeks when the individual felt more alone and experienced less positive affect, he also felt time passing more slowly. In situations with a high level of stress, I felt time pass more quickly”, says the professor.
In the first assessment, participants were also asked how they perceived the passage of time before the pandemic. And, when comparing the answers with those referring to the first month of the quarantine, it was possible to observe, on average, an increase of 20 points in temporal expansion and a reduction of 30 points in temporal pressure, says Raymundo Machado, a researcher at the Instituto do Cérebro do Cérebro do Brasil. Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein and co-author of the article. “But, of course, there is a memory bias in these results, as measurements were not made before the pandemic”, comments the researcher.
According to the data described in the article, young people were the ones who most felt time stopped at the beginning of the pandemic, a period of greater adherence to social distancing measures. With the exception of age, demographic factors – including the number of people in the household, occupation and gender – had no influence on the results.
For the authors, this may be an effect of the sample profile, composed mainly of individuals from the Southeast region (80.5%), women (74.32%), with high schooling (71.78% with higher education), middle-upper class (33.08%) and workers in the education (19.43%) and health (15.36%) sectors.
“This is a common feature of many online studies: greater participation of women, from the Southeast region and with high schooling. Perhaps with a more representative sample of the Brazilian population, we would be able to see the influence of demographic factors”, says Machado.
internal clock
While the pandemic changed the way research participants felt time was passing, it appears to have not affected their ability to estimate small time intervals (measured by the task of pushing the button).
“We all have the ability to estimate time in short intervals. What we did was take the results of this time estimation test [o quanto superestimavam ou subestimavam o intervalo proposto na tarefa] and compare them with the perception scales. And we saw that one thing is not related to the other”, says Machado.
According to Cravo, evidence from the scientific literature indicates that the sensation of time passing faster or slower is mainly influenced by two factors: the relevance of time in a given context and unpredictability.
“For example, if we are late for work [o que torna o tempo relevante no contexto] and we need to wait for the bus to pass at the stop [algo incerto], we have the extreme perception that the minutes do not pass. When we are traveling and having fun, we don’t give relevance to time and it seems to fly”, she says.
As the researcher points out, this perception often changes when we remember these same situations in the past.
“When we remember everything we did on vacation, it seems like that time lasted longer. It is the opposite of what happens when we are in line at the bank: at the time, time drags on, but when we remember the situation after a period, it seems that everything went very quickly”, he comments.
In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, says Cravo, it is still a mystery how we will remember the passage of time during the phase in which social distancing measures lasted. “Several temporal markers, such as Carnival, June Festival and birthdays, have been lost in the last two years. Therefore, this is a question that remains open”, he concludes.