On a subjective sense of time affects our emotional state: if we feel positive emotions, time, as it seems to us, is very fast, if negative, on the contrary, slowly. This phenomenon many times observed in psychological experiments, when the man showed pleasant or unpleasant pictures, and he was saying, what of them, he feels that keeps longer on the screen.

During the reprimand just think that can turn off his head, and beating will end for you faster. (Photo By Alex Maloney.)


However, such research is always assumed that the subjects themselves in the course of experience do not interfere. That is, people passively watched before him flashed some pictures, and he on them, could not influence. Meanwhile, according to psychologists at the University of Illinois (USA), sense of control can correct the imbalance in the subjective sense of time mentioned above.

In our own research scientists suggested Guinea to press a special button, if they wanted to change the frequency of occurrence for a pleasant and unpleasant photos on the screen. The button was fake: in reality frequency of pictures was ruled by the scientists themselves. It was necessary only to participants considered that may affect the course of events. As unpleasant images were pictures of spiders, and in the role of subjects - people with arachnophobia.

As expected, if people saw a scary spider, the time for it was slowed down: the spider was detained on the screen too long." On the contrary, with the appearance of buttons (and hence visibility control terrible images) subjective sense of time began to meet his objective. That is, the screen stayed exactly as much as it was there in reality. A similar effect was recorded and with a pleasant pictures.

It should be said that the control over the frequency of occurrence of the images was to researchers, only they did this so that the Respondent either has appeared or disappeared feeling that he has power over the situation. These data will certainly be useful in further studies of human psychology. As for practical application, it is possible to imagine a training on "If you think that you too long drill the tooth, imagine that you can at any time disable the doctor".

The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Based on the materials of the University of Illinois.