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Why life speeds up: Chunking and the passage of autobiographical time

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Abstract

Time seems to speed up as one ages, and it affects how people find meaning in life and plan their future. What creates this perception? We examine the role of “chunking” – mentally bundling individual moments of experience under broad categories. With age, people group experiences into progressively bigger chunks (e.g., work, family). Consequently, fewer things seem to have occurred in a given period, so it seems to have passed faster in retrospect. Supporting this account, three studies (overall N = 324) show that people led to chunk (vs. not chunk) their past year perceived it as passing faster. The effect of chunking emerged reliably across converging operations and specifically accelerated the chunked period, not other periods. Furthermore, chunking increased the appeal of nostalgia, suggesting that processes that accelerate time instigate a compensatory urge to reflect on momentous occasions of one’s life. Implications for the “self across time” are discussed.

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... Relatedly, chunking, or the partitioning of one's experiences in units, affects the felt rate of change and, indirectly, selfcontinuity. Older people who reported that time passed quickly (which was taken as a proxy for higher past-present self-continuity) were likely to chunk their past experiences in broader (versus narrower) categories (Landau et al. 2018). ...
... Also, adolescents and younger adults are more concerned with change and growth, whereas older adults are more concerned with stability and coherence (Ebner et al. 2006, Freund et al. 2010, such as weaving aspects of their personal history into an integrated story (McAdams 2008). Moreover, because older people are likely to chunk their past experiences in broader (as opposed to narrower) categories (Landau et al. 2018), they will experience higher past-present self-continuity; that is, time will feel to be passing by faster. ...
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Self-continuity is the subjective sense of connection between one's past and present selves (past–present self-continuity), between one's present and future selves (present–future self-continuity), or among one's past, present, and future selves (global self-continuity). We consider the motivational character of the three forms of self-continuity, their regulatory properties, and the internal or external factors that consolidate them. We also review their consequences for attitudes and judgments or decisions, motivation, intentions and behavior, and psychological and physical health. We further the detail psychological and behavioral benefits of self-discontinuity (i.e., a sense of disconnect among temporal selves). We next turn to the brain regions that are activated synchronously with self-continuity. We consider developmental perspectives on self-continuity, discuss collective self-continuity (along with its consequences and regulatory properties), and elaborate on cultural differences in self-continuity. This inaugural Annual Reviews chapter demonstrates the breadth, excitement, and sense of synergy among self-continuity researchers and points to promising research directions. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 74 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
... When considering the past, the context in which a remembered event is embedded can help to explain differing perceptions of time. For example, older adults perceive time to pass more quickly than younger adults, a phenomenon thought to be associated with the overall fraction of one's life that is represented by a particular event (Landau et al., 2018). Relatedly, older adults group time into larger chunks (e.g., that happened in the 80s) whereas younger adults have smaller category boundaries (e.g., that happened when I was 8) for temporal events, which preserves the larger contextual backdrop for each individual event (Landau et al., 2018). ...
... For example, older adults perceive time to pass more quickly than younger adults, a phenomenon thought to be associated with the overall fraction of one's life that is represented by a particular event (Landau et al., 2018). Relatedly, older adults group time into larger chunks (e.g., that happened in the 80s) whereas younger adults have smaller category boundaries (e.g., that happened when I was 8) for temporal events, which preserves the larger contextual backdrop for each individual event (Landau et al., 2018). Context, whether people view an event myopically or acknowledge surrounding events, also helps explain the impact bias as well as strategies to minimize its potency (Wilson et al., 2000). ...
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Time is fundamentally abstract, making it difficult to conceptualize and vulnerable to mental distortions. Nine preregistered experiments identify temporal illusions that characterize prospective time judgments and corresponding consequences for decision making in a variety of domains. Using visual illusions as a grounding metaphor, studies 1–4 demonstrated that the temporal distance between two dates was perceived as closer together as those two dates were imagined further into the future (e.g., Vanishing Point); the length of a single day whether negative (e.g., a 12 h illness—Study 2a) or positive (e.g., 12 h with a good friend—Study 2b) was estimated to feel longer when embedded within a short versus long trip (e.g., the Delbouef Illusion); a 60 min activity was expected to go by more quickly when adjacent activities were 90 (vs. 30) min (e.g., Ebbinghaus Illusion); and a 9+1 day vacation was expected to be considerably lengthier than an 11–1 day vacation (e.g., Representational Momentum). Four additional studies explored moderating factors (Studies 5 and 6) and the impact of distortions on downstream non-time judgments including the forecasted emotional intensity of a negative event (Study 6), estimations of fair monetary compensation for lost time (Study 7), and willingness to make prosocial time commitments (Study 8). Implications for uncovering additional temporal illusions as well as practical applications for leveraging the relativity of prospective time to achieve desired cognitive and behavioral outcomes are discussed. Keywords: Prospective time judgments, Temporal illusions, Time perception, Judgment and decision making
... People's experience of time, including time awareness, can be subjective and varied. Sometimes feelings of too-fast time and too-slow time passage in everyday life can be psychologically harmful (Landau et al. 2018). Thus, understanding the psychological mechanisms of time awareness is critical to mental health. ...
... Normally, feeling time as passing too fast is psychologically harmful (Landau et al. 2018). Evidence can be observed in various cases from a vacation elapsing in a blink of eyes to a carefree childhood existing only in memory. ...
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The purpose of this study is to systematically investigate the individual-differences factors related to time awareness in everyday life. Three hundred and nine individuals in China, from 14- to 75-year old, were sampled to complete a questionnaire that consists of instruments measuring time awareness, meaning in life, achievement motivation, affective state and perceived remaining lifetime. The results showed that meaning in life positively predicted present passage-of-time judgment but not retrospective passage-of-time judgment. Meaning in life mediated the effects of achievement motivation and affective state on present passage-of-time judgment. Moreover, perceived remaining lifetime played a role in the associations by moderating the effect of achievement motivation on meaning in life. The findings aligned with socioemotional selectivity theory, which explains that people shift from knowledge-related goals to emotion-related goals as the end of life becomes imminent.
... Regarding subjective time, Thönes and Stocker (2019) differentiate three aspects of the mental representation of time: temporal processing, time perception in terms of passage, and time perception in terms of duration. Concerning time perception (i.e., subjective time) in terms of passage, the internal experience of the passage of time can be such that time passes faster or slower compared to objective time depending on the age of the observer and the aging process (Draaisma, 2004;Gruber et al., 2004;Landau et al., 2018;Lee & Janssen, 2019;Lemlich, 1975;Winkler et al., 2017). Adults often perceive time passing more quickly as they age due to the repetitive nature of their lives and decreased exposure to novel events compared to childhood (Gagnon-Harvey, McArthur, Tétreault, Fortin-Guichard, & Grondin, 2021;Lee & Janssen, 2019). ...
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This study investigates the relationship between the subjective time experience and aesthetic experience , including bodily sensations , as observers view recordings of dance choreographies of contemporary and hip-hop dance. After watching each of the six different video-recorded dance choreographies, the participants (Serbian students N=122, aged between 17 and 27) rated their perception of time (i.e., duration, passage), their aesthetic experience, and bodily sensations. In regard to the duration aspect of time perception, the results indicated that the observers’ estimations of the duration of each choreography do not differ significantly from the objective duration of the observed choreography. In contrast, the results for the passage of time show that the participants perceived time as passing much faster when watching hip-hop choreographies . Specifically for hip-hop choreographies , Dynamism and Focus positively predict subjective time experience. In line with previous studies, these findings suggest that heightened focus on an aesthetic object, as well as immersion in an activity, tends to diminish awareness of the passage of time, leading to the sensation of time passing more quickly.
... Thönes és Stocker (2019) az idő mentális reprezentációjának három aspektusát különbözteti meg a szubjektív idővel kapcsolatban: az időfeldolgozást, az idő múlásának érzékelését és az időtartam érzékelését. Az idő múlását az objektív időhöz képest gyorsabbnak és lassabbnak is lehet érzékelni, amelyet a megfigyelő életkora és az idősödés folyamata is befolyásolhat (Draaisma, 2004;Gruber et al., 2004;Landau et al., 2018;Lee & Janssen, 2019;Lemlich, 1975;Winkler et al., 2017). Az életkor előrehaladtával gyakran gyorsabban múlónak érzékeljük az időt, egyrész a felnőtt lét repetitív jellege miatt, másrészt annak köszönhetően, hogy a gyermekkorhoz képest kevesebb újszerű esemény történik felnőttkorban (Gagnon-Harvey, McArthur, Tétreault, Fortin-Guichard, & Grondin, 2021;Lee & Janssen, 2019). ...
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Jelen tanulmány a szubjektív időélmény és az esztétikai élmény közötti összefüggést vizsgálja, a testérzeteket is fókuszba helyezve. A vizsgálatban 17 és 27 év közötti szerb hallgatók (N = 122) vettek részt, akik hat különböző tánckoreográfia (kortárs tánc és hiphop) megtekintése után értékelték saját időérzékelésüket, esztétikai élményüket és testérzeteiket. Az eredmények arra mutatnak rá, hogy a nézők szubjektív becslése az egyes koreográfiák időtartamára vonatkozóan nem különbözik jelentősen a koreográfiák objektív időtartamától. Ezzel szemben az idő múlására vonatkozó eredmények azt mutatják, hogy a résztvevők sokkal gyorsabbnak érzékelték az idő múlását, amikor hiphop koreográfiákat néztek. A hiphop koreográfiák esetében a dinamizmus és a fókusz dimenziói jelezték előre pozitívan a szubjektív időélményt. A korábbi vizsgálatokkal összhangban ezek az eredmények azt sugallják, hogy a fokozott összpontosítás az esztétikai tárgyra, valamint az elmélyülés a tevékenységben képes csökkenteni az idő múlásának tudatosságát, amelytől úgy érezhetjük, hogy az idő gyorsabban telik.
... Why these edge-centric events reliably occur at the boundaries of movie scenes remains unclear. One possibility is that boundary events 1 serve as brain-based markers for the discretization of experience ( Landau et al., 2018;Miller, 1956). That is, that boundary events 1 signify the ending of one subjectively and perceptually defined segment and the beginning of another ( Kurby & Zacks, 2008;Sargent et al., 2013;Shin & DuBrow, 2021). ...
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Recent studies have shown that functional connectivity can be decomposed into its exact frame-wise contributions, revealing short-lived, infrequent, and high-amplitude time points referred to as “events.” Events contribute disproportionately to the time-averaged connectivity pattern, improve identifiability and brain-behavior associations, and differences in their expression have been linked to endogenous hormonal fluctuations and autism. Here, we explore the characteristics of events while subjects watch movies. Using two independently-acquired imaging datasets in which participants passively watched movies, we find that events synchronize across individuals and based on the level of synchronization, can be categorized into three distinct classes: those that synchronize at the boundaries between movies, those that synchronize during movies, and those that do not synchronize at all. We find that boundary events, compared to the other categories, exhibit greater amplitude, distinct co-fluctuation patterns, and temporal propagation. We show that underlying boundary events1 is a specific mode of co-fluctuation involving the activation of control and salience systems alongside the deactivation of visual systems. Events that synchronize during the movie, on the other hand, display a pattern of co-fluctuation that is time-locked to the movie stimulus. Finally, we found that subjects’ time-varying brain networks are most similar to one another during these synchronous events.
... Why events reliably occur at boundaries remains unclear. One possibility is that boundary events serve as brain-based markers for the discretization of experience [45,46]. That is, that boundary events signify the ending of one subjectively and perceptually defined segment and the beginning of another [47][48][49]. ...
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Recent studies have shown that functional connectivity can be decomposed into its exact framewise contributions, revealing short-lived, infrequent, and high-amplitude time points referred to as ``events.'' Although events contribute disproportionately to the time-averaged connectivity pattern, improve identifiability and brain-behavior associations, and have been linked to endogenous hormonal fluctuations and autism, their origins remain unclear. Here, we address this question using two independently-acquired imaging datasets in which participants passively watched movies. We find that events synchronize across individuals and based on the level of synchronization, can be categorized into three distinct classes: those that synchronize at the boundaries between movies, those that synchronize during movies, and those that do not synchronize at all. We find that boundary events, compared to the other categories, exhibit greater amplitude, distinct co-fluctuation patterns, and temporal propagation. We show that underlying boundary events is a specific mode of co-fluctuation involving the activation of control and salience systems alongside the deactivation of visual systems. Finally, we find a strong positive relationship between the similarity of time-locked co-fluctuation patterns and the propensity for those time-locked frames to involve synchronous events. Collectively, our results suggest that the spatiotemporal properties of events are non-random and locked to time-varying stimuli.
... To put it much precisely, a person feels greater self-continuity from yesterday to today, than from a year ago to today (Peetz and Wilson, 2013). This might be due to differences in the changes between short and long temporal frames (Landau et al., 2018), or a laypeople idea that there must be more changes in a longer time frame. ...
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Life, whatsoever it is, is a temporal flux. Everything is doomed to change often apparently beyond our awareness. My body appears totally different now, so does my mind. I have gained new attitudes and new ambitions, and a substantial number of old ones have been discarded. But, I am still the same person in an ongoing manner. Besides, recent neuroscientific and psychological evidence has shown that our conscious perception happens as a series of discrete or bounded instants—it emerges in temporally scattered, gappy, and discrete forms. But, if it is so, how does the brain persevere our self-continuity (or continuity of identity) in this gappy setting? How is it possible that despite moment-to-moment changes in my appearance and mind, I am still feeling that I am that person? How can we tackle with this second by second gap and resurrection in our existence which leads to a foundation of wholeness and continuity of our self? How is continuity of self (collective set of our connected experiences in the vessel of time) that results in a feeling that one’s life has purpose and meaning preserved? To answer these questions, the problem has been comprehended from a philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspective. I realize that first and foremost fact lies in the temporal nature of identity. Having equipped with these thoughts, in this article, it is hypothesized that according to two principles (the principle of reafference or corollary discharge and the principle of a time theory) self-continuity is maintained. It is supposed that there should be a precise temporal integration mechanism in the CNS with the outside world that provides us this smooth, ungappy flow of the Self. However, we are often taken for granted the importance of self-continuity, but it can be challenged by life transitions such as entering adulthood, retirement, senility, emigration, and societal changes such as immigration, globalization, and in much unfortunate and extreme cases of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
... People who activated more than four memories judged time as having passed more slowly (Kosak et al., 2019); there was no further linear increase of passage of time judgement with larger numbers of recalled events. A test of the memory hypothesis was undertaken in a study where subjects were asked to form chunks from their distinct memories when writing about last year's events and activities (Landau et al., 2018). This grouping of memories into broader categories of experience led to a relative speeding up of subjective time as compared to a control condition where participants did not chunk their memories. ...
Article
A widely reproduced finding across numerous studies of different cultures is that adults perceive the most recent 10 years of their lives to have passed particularly fast, and that this perceived speed increases as they grow older. Potential explanatory factors for this effect are believed to be more routines in life as we age as well as an increase in time pressure during middle adult age, both factors that would lead to a reduced autobiographical memory load. Fewer contextual changes in life are known to cause the passage of time to be perceived as faster. Taking advantage of the database created for the study that first captured this age effect on subjective time (Wittmann & Lehnhoff, 2005), we investigated the role that having children plays in the subjective speeding of time. Adults aged between 20 and 59 who had children reported that time over the last 10 years passed subjectively more quickly than adults of the same age group without children. Factors such as education or gender did not influence subjective time. A small correlation effect could be seen in the fact that parents with more children reported that time passed more quickly. Experienced time pressure was not a differentiating factor between the two groups, as time pressure was associated with a faster passage of time in all adults. Future systematic studies will have to reveal what factors on autobiographical memory and time might be accountable for this clear effect that raising children has on perceived time.
... Many theories have been proposed in the literature to explain the phenomenon (see Table 1), with several accounts relating the phenomenon to age and aging. First, a decrease in the number of memorable events in older age has been proposed as an explanation (Fraisse, 1963(Fraisse, , 1984Guyau, 1890;James, 1890;Landau et al., 2018;Winkler et al., 2017). For instance, James (1890) suggested that life in late adulthood has more routines and fewer unique events as compared to childhood. ...
Article
Because the general population may be familiar with the phenomenon that life appears to speed up as people become older, participants’ preconceptions may affect how they answer questionnaires about the subjective experience of time. To be able to account for these preconceptions in future research, we assessed laypeople’s beliefs about the phenomenon. Participants (N = 313) were asked whether they were familiar with the phenomenon, whether they experienced the phenomenon themselves, and what they thought that the cause or causes of the phenomenon may be. More than 80% of the participants had read or heard about the phenomenon prior to the study, suggesting that the phenomenon is well-known among the general population. Furthermore, although most participants experienced the phenomenon themselves, familiarity with the phenomenon affected whether they felt that life appeared to speeding up and whether time passed fast for them. Familiarity also affected whether participants attributed the phenomenon to changes in objective or subjective time but not the endorsement of the phenomenon’s causes. Finally, participants also had preconceptions about what time periods represent ‘the present’ and ‘the past’. Whereas nearly all participants considered the past to have lasted more than one year, two-third of the participants felt that the present represented a period less than one year.
... Di Domenico et al. (2018), Becker et al. (2018), and Landau et al. (2018) were predominantly concerned with sources of self-continuity. Another set of four articles addresses in more detail this exact topic: What does self-continuity do for us? ...
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We investigate why individuals commonly perceive time as passing quickly when reflecting on past periods of their lives. A traditional cognitive account proposes that routine experienced during a period decreases the number of memorable events, making that period appear short in retrospect. A motivational account derived from self-determination theory proposes that a period remembered as lacking self-determined growth feels unsatisfying or wasted, and thus seems to pass quickly. Two exploratory studies ( N = 999) did not consistently support these accounts, although in Study 2 remembered routine predicted faster perceived pace, as hypothesized. Contrary to our motivational account, remembered growth positively, rather than negatively, predicted pace. Interpreting this unexpected finding, we conducted two pre-registered studies ( N = 965) exploring how satisfaction with, and nostalgic longing for, periods of growth contribute to the perception of time passing quickly. Our findings have implications for encouraging productive responses to the subjective pace of life.
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We formulated, tested, and supported, in 6 studies, a theoretical model according to which individuals use nostalgia as a way to reinject meaningfulness in their lives when they experience boredom. Studies 1-3 established that induced boredom causes increases in nostalgia when participants have the opportunity to revert to their past. Studies 4 and 5 examined search for meaning as a mediator of the effect of boredom on nostalgia. Specifically, Study 4 showed that search for meaning mediates the effect of state boredom on nostalgic memory content, whereas Study 5 demonstrated that search for meaning mediates the effect of dispositional boredom on dispositional nostalgia. Finally, Study 6 examined the meaning reestablishment potential of nostalgia during boredom: Nostalgia mediates the effect of boredom on sense of meaningfulness and presence of meaning in one's life. Nostalgia counteracts the meaninglessness that individuals experience when they are bored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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Two experiments with 128 undergraduates used levels-of-processing tasks to investigate hypotheses on remembered duration of relatively long intervals. In Exp I, level of processing (shallow or deep) of presented information did not affect remembered duration, even though it had a substantial effect on memory for individual stimulus events. In Exp II, an interval containing different kinds of tasks (both shallow and deep processing) was remembered as being longer than one containing a single kind of task (either shallow or deep processing). Current formulations of event-memory, attentional, and informational hypotheses on remembered duration cannot easily explain these findings. However, the findings are consistent with a contextual-change hypothesis, which emphasizes memory for the overall amount of change in cognitive context during an interval. Implications regarding contextual factors in memory are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Individual differences in the desire for simple structure may influence how people understand, experience, and interact with their worlds. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that the Personal Need for Structure (PNS) scale (M. Thompson, M. Naccarato, and K. Parker, 1989) possesses sufficient reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. In Studies 3–5, Ss high in PNS were especially likely to organize social and nonsocial information in less complex ways, stereotype others, and complete their research requirements on time. These data suggest that people differ in their chronic desire for simple structure and that this difference can have important social–cognitive and behavioral implications. A consideration of chronic information-processing motives may facilitate the theoretical integration of social cognition, affect, motivation, and personality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Time is experienced as passing more quickly the more changes happen in a situation. The present research tested the idea that time perception depends on the level of construal of the situation. Building on previous research showing that concrete rather than abstract mental construal causes people to perceive more variations in a given situation, we found in 3 studies that participants in a concrete mind-set experienced time as passing more quickly than participants in an abstract mind-set. In 2 further studies we demonstrated that the level on which actual changes happen in a given situation moderated this effect: Changes in high-level aspects mainly affected time estimation of participants primed with an abstract mind-set, whereas changes in low-level aspects affected time estimation of participants primed with a concrete mind-set. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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Sexual cues influence decisions not only about sex, but also about unrelated outcomes such as money. In the presence of sexual cues, individuals are more impatient when making intertemporal monetary tradeoffs, choosing smaller immediate amounts over larger delayed amounts. Previous research has emphasized the power of sexual cues to induce a strong general psychological desire to obtain not only sex-related but all available rewards. In the case of money, that heightened appetite enhances the perceived value of immediate monetary rewards. We propose a different psychological mechanism to explain this effect: Sexual cues induce impatience through their ability to lengthen the perceived temporal distance to delayed rewards. That is, sexual cues make the temporal delay seem subjectively longer, resulting in greater impatience for monetary rewards. We attribute this process to the arousing nature of sexual cues, thus extending findings on arousal and overestimation of elapsed time to the domain of future time perception and intertemporal preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).
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Two experiments tested an interval segmentation explanation of duration judgment. In Experiment 1, a 170-sec time interval was filled with 27 unrelated words and three high-priority events (HPEs). These HPEs were clustered at the beginning of the interval (unsegmented condition) or distributed throughout the interval (segmented condition). Both recognition and recall of list information were measured, in addition to duration estimates. While no differences in memory performance were found, duration estimates were greater in the the segmented condition. Experiment 2 also tested the effects of interval segmentation but used 36 words and eight HPEs, a longer clock duration, and also measured the remembered number of events (RNE) in the interval. As in Experiment 1, the segmented condition produced longer duration estimates in the absence of memory performance and RNE differences. A segmentation hypothesis seems a better explanation of these results than previously proposed storage size or amount-of-processing models of duration judgment.
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According to terror management theory, people turn to meaning-providing structures to cope with the knowledge of inevitable mortality. Recent theory and research suggest that nostalgia is a meaning-providing resource and thus may serve such an existential function. The current research tests and supports this idea. In Experiments 1 and 2, nostalgia proneness was measured and mortality salience manipulated. In Experiment 1, when mortality was salient, the more prone to nostalgia participants were, the more they perceived life to be meaningful. In Experiment 2, when mortality was salient, the more prone to nostalgia participants were, the less death thoughts were accessible. In Experiment 3, nostalgia and mortality salience were manipulated. It was found that nostalgia buffered the effects of mortality salience on death-thought accessibility.
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For a given physical duration, certain events can be experienced as subjectively longer in duration than others. Try this for yourself: take a quick glance at the second hand of a clock. Immediately, the tick will pause momentarily and appear to be longer than the subsequent ticks. Yet, they all last exactly 1 s. By and large, a deviant or an unexpected stimulus in a series of similar events (same duration, same features) can elicit a relative overestimation of subjective time (or “time dilation”) but, as is shown here, this is not always the case. We conducted an event-related functional magnetic neuroimaging study on the time dilation effect. Participants were presented with a series of five visual discs, all static and of equal duration (standards) except for the fourth one, a looming or a receding target. The duration of the target was systematically varied and participants judged whether it was shorter or longer than all other standards in the sequence. Subjective time dilation was observed for the looming stimulus but not for the receding one, which was estimated to be of equal duration to the standards. The neural activation for targets (looming and receding) contrasted with the standards revealed an increased activation of the anterior insula and of the anterior cingulate cortex. Contrasting the looming with the receding targets (i.e., capturing the time dilation effect proper) revealed a specific activation of cortical midline structures. The implication of midline structures in the time dilation illusion is here interpreted in the context of self-referential processes.
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A process was proposed through which individuals regulate their motivation to perform necessary but uninteresting activities over time. If committed to continuing, individuals may engage in interest-enhancing strategies that can change the activity into something more positive to perform. In Study 1 Ss performed novel tasks and generated strategies to make regular performance interesting. In Study 2 Ss actually used these strategies primarily in conditions indicating a self-regulatory attempt: The task was currently boring, there was a perceived reason to continue (alleged health benefit), and a relevant strategy was available. Strategy use was associated with a change in activity definition and greater likelihood of subsequently performing the activity. In Study 3 Ss beliefs about how to maintain motivation to perform more everyday activities emphasized the importance of regulating interest relative to other self-regulatory strategies.
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A theoretical framework is outlined in which the key construct is the need for (nonspecific) cognitive closure. The need for closure is a desire for definite knowledge on some issue. It represents a dimension of stable individual differences as well as a situationally evocable state. The need for closure has widely ramifying consequences for social-cognitive phenomena at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and group levels of analysis. Those consequences derive from 2 general tendencies, those of urgency and performance. The urgency tendency represents an individual's inclination to attain closure as soon as possible, and the permanence tendency represents an individual's inclination to maintain it for as long as possible. Empirical evidence for present theory attests to diverse need for closure effects on fundamental social psychological phenomena, including impression formation, stereotyping, attribution, persuasion, group decision making, and language use in intergroup contexts.
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A variety of researches are examined from the standpoint of information theory. It is shown that the unaided observer is severely limited in terms of the amount of information he can receive, process, and remember. However, it is shown that by the use of various techniques, e.g., use of several stimulus dimensions, recoding, and various mnemonic devices, this informational bottleneck can be broken. 20 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
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The authors investigated the influence of routine on people's estimation of time, testing the hypothesis that duration is remembered as being shorter when time is spent in a routine activity. In 4 experiments and 2 field studies, the authors compared time estimations in routine and nonroutine conditions. Routine was established by a sequence of markers (Study 1), variation of the task (Studies 2 and 3), or the number of repetitive blocks (Study 4). As hypothesized, the duration of the task was remembered as being shorter in routine conditions than in nonroutine ones. This trend was reversed in experienced (prospective) judgments when participants were informed beforehand of the duration-judgment task (Study 3). In Studies 5 and 6, the authors examined remembered duration judgments of vacationers and kibbutz members, which provided further support for the main hypothesis.
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Seven methodologically diverse studies addressed 3 fundamental questions about nostalgia. Studies 1 and 2 examined the content of nostalgic experiences. Descriptions of nostalgic experiences typically featured the self as a protagonist in interactions with close others (e.g., friends) or in momentous events (e.g., weddings). Also, the descriptions contained more expressions of positive than negative affect and often depicted the redemption of negative life scenes by subsequent triumphs. Studies 3 and 4 examined triggers of nostalgia and revealed that nostalgia occurs in response to negative mood and the discrete affective state of loneliness. Studies 5, 6, and 7 investigated the functional utility of nostalgia and established that nostalgia bolsters social bonds, increases positive self-regard, and generates positive affect. These findings demarcate key landmarks in the hitherto uncharted research domain of nostalgia.
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Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscience; artificial intelligence; linguistics; and philosophy. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes computational models of analogy as well as their relation to computational models of other cognitive processes. The second part addresses the role of analogy in a wide range of cognitive tasks, such as forming complex cognitive structures, conveying emotion, making decisions, and solving problems. The third part looks at the development of analogy in children and the possible use of analogy in nonhuman primates. Contributors Miriam Bassok, Consuelo B. Boronat, Brian Bowdle, Fintan Costello, Kevin Dunbar, Gilles Fauconnier, Kenneth D. Forbus, Dedre Gentner, Usha Goswami, Brett Gray, Graeme S. Halford, Douglas Hofstadter, Keith J. Holyoak, John E. Hummel, Mark T. Keane, Boicho N. Kokinov, Arthur B. Markman, C. Page Moreau, David L. Oden, Alexander A. Petrov, Steven Phillips, David Premack, Cameron Shelley, Paul Thagard, Roger K.R. Thompson, William H. Wilson, Phillip Wolff Bradford Books imprint
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If there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship. In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter this erosion of humanistic education. Focusing on the individual faculty member and his or her own professional practice, Berg and Seeber present both an analysis of the culture of speed in the academy and ways of alleviating stress while improving teaching, research, and collegiality. The Slow Professor will be a must-read for anyone in academia concerned about the frantic pace of contemporary university life.
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Existential theory and previous qualitative research have suggested that a lack of life meaning and purpose causes boredom, as well as other types of negative affect such as depression or anxiety. Although these variables have been shown to be correlated at one point in time, the relationships among these constructs have not been investigated using a controlled, quantitative research design. In Study 1 a (N = 131), boredom was shown to be related to, yet psychometrically distinct from, life meaning, depression, and anxiety. In Study 1b (N = 88), life meaning significantly predicted changes in boredom across time while depression and anxiety did not. In addition, boredom was a significant predictor of changes in life meaning across time, while depression and anxiety were not. Finally, in Study 2 (N = 102), manipulating perceptions of life meaning significantly changed boredom, while a manipulation of mood did not. The nature of the relationship between life meaning and boredom, as well as some clinical implications, are discussed.
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Timing is essential to the functioning of organisms. Perhaps because the time dimension plays such an important role in human life, the psychology of time was an important topic of early psychological research and theorizing. An examination of the role that time plays in people's lives can focus on various aspects of temporal experience. For example, a researcher can study what makes people judge events to be simultaneous, or judge one event as preceding or following another event. In this article, we focus on the processes that subserve experiences of short duration (ranging from seconds to minutes). Duration timing is essential for representing the immediate external environment. For example, driving or crossing a busy street requires the continual estimation of speed and duration. As people wait in a queue while shopping or receiving a service, feelings of lengthened duration may determine whether they complete the transaction or abandon it. A person using computer software assesses the time required to complete an operation; if this duration seems excessive, the attitude regarding the software will be negative. Because many everyday situations involve duration estimation, it is important to understand the underlying processes.
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Boredom is a common experience that affects people on multiple levels, including their thoughts, feelings, motivations, and actions. Not much research, however, has examined what makes the experience of boredom distinct from other affective experiences. Based on earlier research on boredom and our meaning-regulation framework, we conducted a series of four studies that demonstrate the distinct experiential content of boredom. More than other negative affective experiences (sadness, anger, and frustration), boredom makes people feel unchallenged while they think that the situation and their actions are meaningless (Study 1). The distinct experiential content of boredom is associated with boredom proneness (Study 2) and with state boredom experiences (Study 3). In addition, the distinct experiential content of boredom is affected by contextual features (Study 4). This series of studies provides a systematic understanding of what people feel, think, and want to do when bored, distinctive from other negative experiences. KeywordsBoredom–Challenge–Meaning–Emotion
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Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that an understanding of human motivation requires a consideration of innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. We discuss the SDT concept of needs as it relates to previous need theories, emphasizing that needs specify the necessary conditions for psychological growth, integrity, and well-being. This concept of needs leads to the hypotheses that different regulatory processes underlying goal pursuits are differentially associated with effective functioning and well-being and also that different goal contents have different relations to the quality of behavior and mental health, specifically because different regulatory processes and different goal contents are associated with differing degrees of need satisfaction. Social contexts and individual differences that support satisfaction of the basic needs facilitate natural growth processes including intrinsically motivated behavior and integration of extrinsic motivations, whereas those that forestall autonomy, competence, or relatedness are associated with poorer motivation, performance, and well-being. We also discuss the relation of the psychological needs to cultural values, evolutionary processes, and other contemporary motivation theories.
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People who feel bored experience that their current situation is meaningless and are motivated to reestablish a sense of meaningfulness. Building on the literature that conceptualizes social identification as source of meaningfulness, the authors tested the hypothesis that boredom increases the valuation of ingroups and devaluation of outgroups. Indeed, state boredom increased the liking of an ingroup name (Study 1), it increased hypothetical jail sentences given to an outgroup offender (Study 2 and Study 3), especially in comparison to an ingroup offender (Study 3), it increased positive evaluations of participants' ingroups, especially when ingroups were not the most favored ones to begin with (Study 4), and it increased the appreciation of an ingroup symbol, mediated by people's need to engage in meaningful behavior (Study 5). Several measures ruled out that these results could be explained by other affective states. These novel findings are discussed with respect to boredom, social identity, and existential psychology research.
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Correlational and experimental methods provide evidence relevant to seven theories of humans' general impressions of the speed of time, including theories of the purported subjective acceleration of time with aging. A total of 1865 adults from two countries, ranging in age from 16 to 80, reported how fast time appears to pass over different spans of time. Other measures tapped the experience of life changes and time pressure, and experimental manipulations were used to test two models based on forward telescoping and difficulty of recall. Respondents of all ages reported that time seems to pass quickly. In contrast to widely held beliefs, age differences in reports of the subjective speed of time were very small, except for the question about how fast the last 10 years had passed. Findings support a theory based on the experience of time pressure.
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Processing fluency, or the subjective experience of ease with which people process information, reliably influences people's judgments across a broad range of social dimensions. Experimenters have manipulated processing fluency using a vast array of techniques, which, despite their diversity, produce remarkably similar judgmental consequences. For example, people similarly judge stimuli that are semantically primed (conceptual fluency), visually clear (perceptual fluency), and phonologically simple (linguistic fluency) as more true than their less fluent counterparts. The authors offer the first comprehensive review of such mechanisms and their implications for judgment and decision making. Because every cognition falls along a continuum from effortless to demanding and generates a corresponding fluency experience, the authors argue that fluency is a ubiquitous metacognitive cue in reasoning and social judgment.
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The present study explored the relationship between participants' level of anxiety about death and both their sense of purposefulness in life and their personal experience of time controlling for the effects of participants' general anxiety and social desirability set. Participants were 145 women aged sixty to eighty-five, members of senior citizens clubs in suburban New Jersey, who agreed to complete a booklet of questionnaires at home and return them anonymously. As hypothesized, respondents high in measured death anxiety were found to be more likely to express less sense of purposefulness to their lives, a sense that time is moving forward, a feeling of being harassed and pressured by the passage of time, an experienced discontinuity and lack of direction in their lives, an inclination to procrastinate and be inefficient in their use of time, and a reported disposition towards being inconsistent. For the most part, the relationship between death anxiety and the other variables was found to hold even when the effects of general anxiety and social desirability were partialed out.
Article
The present paper gives some evidence that differences in subjective time acceleration with aging are correlated with differences in the extent to which time is structured for the individual, as opposed to free time. Lemlich's 1975 hypothesis relating this speeding up of time to the subjective duration of the time interval was only partially supported by the evidence. Subjective change perceptions of happiness were not correlated significantly with this phenomenon of time perception.
Article
The subjective sense of future time plays an essential role in human motivation. Gradually, time left becomes a better predictor than chronological age for a range of cognitive, emotional, and motivational variables. Socioemotional selectivity theory maintains that constraints on time horizons shift motivational priorities in such a way that the regulation of emotional states becomes more important than other types of goals. This motivational shift occurs with age but also appears in other contexts (for example, geographical relocations, illnesses, and war) that limit subjective future time.
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