There have been some excellent articles recently on the psychology of time but one of the most fascinating is from Developing Intelligence who look at a new study that suggests our concept of time becomes nonlinear as we look into the future – in other words, not all futures are equal.
Studies have offered people, for example, ¬£5 now, or more money in the future. Despite the fact that in economic terms they’re better off waiting even for a small amount more, people tend to want considerably more money in the future to make the wait ‘worth it’.
As the DevIntell article notes, this has largely been explained by impulsivity in the past, but a new study considers a radical alternative.
What if the effect is not because we’re impulsive, but because our concept of time is non-linear? In other words, we are reasoning rationally but not on the basis of how much additional time there actually is, but how much longer the wait seems.
These are quite different concepts – for example, we know logically that waiting four weeks is exactly four times as long as waiting a week, but it might not feel exactly four times as bad.
The study asked participants how much extra they’d have to be paid to receive a $75 gift voucher, either in 3 months, 1 year or 3 years. They also had to mark a line to indicate how long each wait seemed, from ‘Very Short’ at one end to ‘Very Long’ at the other.
When compared against the actual time, participants seemed to show hyperbolic discounting, but when compared against the subjective judgement the discounting effect disappeared.
The study goes on to test the effect in different ways, but also added another intriguing angle – when participants were asked to estimate the duration of how long various activities would take, essentially better calibrating their subjective time with actual time, the discounting effect was reduced.
I also really recommend another recent DevIntell post on time perception, discussing how cognitive science theories are attempting to explain how we can perceive something that doesn’t have any ‘sensation’ attached to it.
Any if you’re still hungry for more time, science writer Carl Zimmer has an article in Discover Magazine about how the brain keeps track of time.
Link to DevIntell on distortions in future time perception.
pdf of full-text of study.
Link to DevIntell on time perception and time ‘sensation’.
Link to Carl Zimmer’s article on neuroscience of time.