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Review
The time–emotion paradox
Sylvie Droit-Volet
*
and Sandrine Gil
Blaise Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand, France
The present manuscript discusses the time–emotion paradox in time psychology: although humansare able to accurately estimate time as if they possess a specific mechanism that allows them tomeasure time (i.e. an internal clock), their representations of time are easily distorted by the context.Indeed, our sense of time depends on intrinsic context, such as the emotional state, and on extrinsiccontext, such as the rhythm of others’ activity. Existing studies on the relationships between emotionand time suggest that these contextual variations in subjective time do not result from the incorrectfunctioning of the internal clock but rather from the excellent ability of the internal clock to adapt toeventsin one’s environment. Finally, the fact that weliveand movein time and that everything, everyact, takes more or less time has often been neglected. Thus, there is no unique, homogeneous timebut instead multiple experiences of time. Our subjective temporal distortions directly reflect the wayour brain and body adapt to these multiple time scales.
Keywords:
emotion; time perception; timing
1. INTRODUCTION
The heart has itreasons of which reason knows nothing.(Pascal,
Les pense´ es
Descartes’ error
)
One of the greatest paradoxes in the field of timepsychology is the time–emotion paradox. Over the lastfew decades, an increasing volume of data has beenidentified demonstrating the accuracy with whichhumans are able to estimate time. Confronted withthis amazing ability, psychologists have supposedthat humans, as other animals, possess a specificmechanism that allows them to measure time.Gibbon(1977)defined this mechanism as an internal clock.Since then, most psychologists have concentrated theirefforts on collecting empirical data with a view tovalidating the internal clock models, while neuroscien-tists have focused more on identifying the neuralsubstrates of this clock system. However, under theinfluence of emotions, humans can be extremelyinaccurate in their time judgements (Droit-Volet &Meck 2007). For example,thepassage oftime seems tovary depending on whether the subject is in anunpleasant or pleasant context. It drags when beingcriticized by the boss but flies by when discussing withour friends. That is the time–emotion paradox: why,given that we possess a sophisticated time measure-ment mechanism, are we so inaccurate in our temporaljudgements when experiencing emotions?Researchers into emotions are engaged in a debateconcerning the relationship between reason andemotion based on the idea that reason alone confersorder on behaviour. Emotions have thus been con-ceived as disrupting and disorganizing behaviours, inour case our fundamental ability to estimate time.However, as discussed byDamasio (1994), in complexreal-world situations, there is no proper reasoningwithout emotion. Emotions guide reasoning duringdecision making. Within this theoretical framework wewantto defend, in thepresentmanuscript, the idea thattemporal illusions such as that time is being shorter orlonger, which it really is, are not the result of anyadditional emotional feeling that disturbs the function-ing of the internal clock. On the contrary, thesetemporal illusions reveal that the internal clock is ahighly adaptive system that enables organisms to adaptefficiently to events in their environment. Studying thetemporal illusions may thus be a means of gaining abetter understanding of the function of emotions andthe mechanism underlying their influence onbehaviours. Conversely, studying the effect of emotionon time judgements may also help us to arrive at abetter understanding of the mechanisms underlyingtime perception, and perhaps to call the internal clockmodels into question. In this manuscript, we firstpresent the internal clock models and then examine theresults of the few studies that have investigated howemotions affect our perception of time. Each type of emotional stimulus will be considered separatelybecause each source of emotion has a specific function(Frijda 2007), and consequently a specific effect ontime perception and motor timing.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
(2009)
364
, 1943–1953doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0013
One contribution of 14 to a Theme Issue ‘The experience of time:neural mechanisms and the interplay of emotion, cognition andembodiment’.
*
Author and address for correspondence: Laboratoire de PsychologySociale et Cognitive, CNRS, UMR 6024, Universite´Blaise Pascal,34 Avenue Carnot, 63037 Clermont-Ferrand, France (sylvie.droit-volet@univ-bpclermont.fr).
1943
This journal is
q
2009 The Royal Society
2. THE INTERNAL CLOCK MODELS ANDTHE EXPLANATORY MECHANISMS OFTEMPORAL ILLUSIONS
[humans] ‘have a special sense for pure time. [
.
] towhat element in the brain process may this sensibilitybe due?’(James,
The Principles of psychology
)
The scalar timing theory (scalar expectancy theory,SET) has been the most popular theory of timing.It was originally developed by Gibbon (1977;Gibbon
. 1984) for animals and then successfully applied tohuman adults (Wearden & McShane 1988;Allan &
Gibbon 1991) and children (Droit-Volet & Wearden2001;Droit-Volet
. 2001). According to the SET,time representation has two fundamental properties:(i) the mean accuracy, i.e. the requirement that theinternal estimates of a stimulus duration are on averageaccurate, and (ii) the scalar property, i.e. the require-ment that the standard deviation of temporaljudgement grows as a linear function of the mean.According to the SET, the mean accuracy of timeestimates originates in a pacemaker–accumulatorsystem that provides the raw material for timerepresentation (Gibbon
. 1984;figure 1). During
the stimulus that is to be timed, the pulses emitted by apacemaker are stored in an accumulator in such a waythat the greater the number of accumulated pulses is,the longer the duration is judged to be. However, inorder to explain temporal judgements and theirvariability, two stages of a higher cognitive level havebeen added to this clock system: a memory and adecisional stage. At the memory stage, the content of the accumulator is stored in working memory, whilesignificant durations experienced previously (e.g. timepreviously reinforced, standard duration) are storedin long-term memory. At the decision stage, thetemporal judgement results from the comparison of the current subjective time with the representationof durations in long-term memory. More recently, anattention-based system has been added to thisconception of time processing in the form of a switchthat closes and opens at the onset and the offset,respectively, of the stimulus to be timed (Zakay &Block 1996).The informational component of this internal clockmodel has been criticized for its lack of neurobiologicalplausibility (e.g.Lewis & Miall 2006;Karmarkar &
Buonomano 2007). Alternative models suggest theexistence of neural oscillators distributed in the brainwhich serve as the basis for the clock, rather than asimple pacemaker (e.g.Matell & Meck 2004).However, the internal clock model remains thedominant theoretical model of time because it permitsanexcellentdescriptionof awiderangeofexperimentalresults across many paradigms (Buhusi & Meck 2005;Droit-Volet
. 2007). Furthermore, it admits thatmany factors might modulate the perception of timeand predicts specific patterns of behavioural data foreach type of involved mechanism (i.e. arousal, atten-tion, memory or decision). This makes it possible forpsychologists studying behaviour to try to identify themain sources of temporal illusions. Within this frame-work, there is now ample evidence that when the levelof physiological activation increases, a specific clockeffect occurs. The internal clock speeds up, thuscausing more pulses to accumulate for the samephysical unit of time. This arousal-induced temporaloverestimation has been documented in numerousstudies that have manipulated the level of arousal byusing click or flicker trains (Treisman
. 1996;Droit-Volet & Wearden 2002;
Ortega & Lopez 2008), by changing body temperature(Wearden & Penton-Voak 1995), or by administratingdrugs that modulate arousal by altering theeffective level of dopamine in the brain. For example,following the administration of dopanimergic agonists(methamphetamine or cocaine), participants eitheroverestimate the elapsed interval or respond earlier,a phenomenon that is characteristic of an increase inthe clock rate (Maricq
. 2007).By contrast, dopaminergic antagonists, such ashaloperidol, produce a temporal underestimation as if the clock were running more slowly(Rammsayer1989,1999;Drew
. 2003).When attentional resources are diverted away fromthe processing of time, an attention-related effectoccurs, causing the subjective experience of time tobe shorter than it really is. This is explained by the factthat the on-line accumulation of temporal ‘pulses’during the stimulus to be timed is compromised whenwe pay less attention to time. More precisely, thedistraction of attention would delay the latency of aswitch closure, or/and would open the switch tempor-arily (Lejeune 1998). In each case, some pulses are lostand the stimulus duration is judged shorter. Thisattention-mediated shortening effect has been exten-sively demonstrated in studies using the dual-taskparadigm (Macar 2002;Coull
. 2004). However,a temporal underestimation of time could also reflect aslowing down of the clock speed. Nevertheless, thankstothe internalclock model, these twotypes of temporalunderestimation can be dissociated when multipleduration values are used. Indeed, the slowing down of the clock would be evidenced by an effect that changes
attentionpacemakermodeswitchmemorycomparator‘long’‘short’accumulatorclock stagememorystagedecisionstage
Figure 1. The temporal information processing model(Gibbon
. 1984).
1944 S. Droit-Volet & S. Gil
Review. The time–emotion paradox
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
(2009)
with the stimulus duration values (i.e. multiplicativeeffect), being relatively greater with longer durationsthan with shorter durations, whereas the attention-related process would be reflected by a constant effect,irrespective of the duration values (i.e. additiveeffect) (Maricq
. 1981;Burle & Casini 2001). As
far as memory storage is concerned, the effect wouldappear to depend on the cholinergic activity in thefrontal cortex, which is affected by cholinergic drugs(acetylcholine) (Meck1983,1996). Moreover, the
memory-related effect emerges progressively andremains relatively permanent, unlike the clock effectthat disappears after repeated feedback, which enablesparticipants to recalibrate their timers. The lattereffect is associated with decisional processes and iswithout doubt the least well investigated of the effects(Wittman & Paulus 2007). However, the mathematicalmodelling of the data in temporal studies that havemanipulated the type of feedback suggests that theparticipants’ more or less conservative attitude doesnot affect their general temporal performance, but onlytheir responses on ambiguous cases in which theduration values are insufficiently differentiated(Wearden & Grindrod 2003;Droit-Volet & Izaute
2007). To summarize, the value of the SET and itsderived temporal information processing model liesin its ability to provide explanations in termsof mechanisms (arousal-induced or attention-relatedmechanism), resulting in the distortion of perceivedtime compared with physical time.
3. THE STANDARDIZED EMOTIONALPICTURES OR SOUNDS AND THEIREFFECT ON TIME PERCEPTION
Looking for Spinoza
)
Interest in the subjective experience of time and itsvariabilityinresponsetoemotionismostcertainlynotarecent phenomenon. As long ago as1890, James notedthat ‘a certain emotional feeling accompanies theintervals of time [
.
]’ and ‘that our feeling of timeharmonizes with different mental moods’. However,studies of this topic are infrequent and most of themhave used the retrospective temporal judgementparadigm (e.g.Gorn
. 2007;Campbell & Bryant 2007).
Intheretrospectiveparadigm, participantsareunawarethat they will be asked to judge the duration of astimulus event. In this condition, the duration is rarelyencoded because their attention is not focused ontemporal information but on the non-temporal propri-eties of events which are particularly salient in theexperienced present. The retrospective temporaljudgement is then re-constructed on the basis of thenon-temporal information retrieved from memory(Zakay & Block 1996). Consequently, although thestudies of retrospective time are particularly interestingfor our understanding of the autobiographical memoryof duration of emotional events, such as traumaticexperiences, they tell us nothing about the effect of emotions on the processing of time
per se
. A furtherproblem lies in the fact that these studies have oftenused long intervals of more than 10 s or 1 min.Angrilli
. (2007), foundthat the effect of emotions on temporal judgementsdisappeared with intervals of more than 4 s. When longdurations are involved, it is methodologically difficultto control the temporal dynamic of emotion. Never-theless, a small number of pioneering studies, allfocusing on stressful situations, have used the prospec-tive paradigm and consistently found that stressfulsituations lengthen subjective time (Langer
. 1961;Thayer & Schiff 1975;Meck 1983;Watts & Sharrock
1984). In a temporal bisection task,Meck (1983)showed that rats overestimated a signal duration whenexposed to continuous footshock stress. In humanadults,Langer
.(1961)observedthata5-sdurationwas overestimated when the participants were approach-ingadangerousprecipice comparedwith whentheyweremoving away from it. As these authors explained, thestressful conditions increased the arousal level, which inturn accelerated the clock speed, thus producing anoverestimation of the duration.More conclusive results have recently been providedby studies that have employed the standardizedemotionalstimulicurrentlyusedinstudiesofemotions.Noulhiane
. (2007)used emotional sounds fromthe international affective digitals sounds (IADS)(Bradley & Lang 1999). They found that the emotionalsounds were judged longer than the neutral sound.Moreover,thenegativesoundswerejudgedlonger thanthe positive sounds. They thus concluded that thephysiological activation induced by an emotionalstimulus is ‘the predominant aspect of the influenceof emotions on time perception’ (p. 702). Usingpicturesfromtheinternationalaffectivepicturessystem(IAPS;Lang
. 2005) and measurements of physiological changes induced by emotion (heart rateand skin conductance response),Angrilli
. (1997)observed the essential role of arousal on timejudgements but also identified the influence of themotivational systems involved in emotions. Indeed,the pictures that induced a strong arousal level inassociation with bodily changes (increase in skinconductance) had different effects on the participants’time judgements as a function of their affective valence.In high-arousal conditions, unpleasant pictures (muti-lated bodies) were overestimated, whereas pleasantpictures(eroticscenes)wereunderestimated.Inversely,in low-arousal conditions, unpleasant pictures wereunderestimated and pleasant pictures overestimated.Thisoppositedirectionofthevalenceeffectasafunctionof arousal suggests that two different mechanismsare triggered by arousal levels: an attention-drivenmechanism for low arousal, and an emotion-driven mechanism for high arousal (Angrilli
.1997). High-arousal pictures should lead to theactivation of the entire body (e.g. heart rate, bloodpressure, contracted muscles) in order to prepare theorganism for action. However, the urgency of thisreadiness for action is greater in the case of defensive(attack or escape) than appetitive motivations (pro-creation) (Bradley
. 2001). AsDarwin (1872/1998)himself explains within his evolutionist perspective,readiness to react (to flee or to attack) to a dangerous
Review. The time–emotion paradox
S. Droit-Volet & S. Gil 1945
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B
(2009)
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