Time perception, often referred to as psychological time or subjective time estimation, is influenced by various factors, including attention, emotional states, and cognitive load. Research has shown that external stimuli and an individual's cognitive or emotional state can significantly alter their perception of time. The nature of stimuli, such as emotional images, auditory cues, or videos, plays a crucial role in shaping subjective duration. Video clips, in particular, have been found to have a more lasting impact on mood and emotion compared to still images. Cognitive load also affects time perception, but research often fails to systematically vary task difficulty, making it challenging to isolate pure temporal processing from other cognitive demands. The characteristics of the perceiver, such as mood or arousal levels, also influence time perception. Studies using both natural and experimentally induced states have shown that mood can affect how time is perceived. However, the time estimation task itself can influence mood or arousal, which requires further investigation. To explore these influences, three experiments were conducted. The first experiment examined how emotional states affect the perceived duration of a video clip, revealing that participants with higher emotional arousal perceived time as longer. The second experiment tested the effect of depression on time perception, finding that depressed participants experienced significant distortions in time perception. The third experiment explored the impact of affective states induced by ambiguous stimuli under different cognitive loads, showing that positive affect led to time overestimation under low cognitive load, while negative affect led to underestimation under high cognitive load. Overall, these findings confirm a strong link between affect, cognition, and time perception, highlighting the need for further research to understand the mechanisms through which affective pathways influence temporal processing.

Time perception, affect, cognitive load, experiment, temporal processing.

Applied Psychology Around the World | Volume 7, Issue 2