The role of valence, arousal, stimulus type, and temporal paradigm in the effect of emotion on time perception: A meta-analysis

Anecdotal experiences show that the human perception of time is subjective, and changes with one’s emotional state. Over the past 25 years, increasing empirical evidence has demonstrated that emotions distort time perception and usually result in overestimation. Yet, some inconsistencies deserve cla...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychonomic bulletin & review 2023-02, Vol.30 (1), p.1-21
Main Authors: Cui, Xiaobing, Tian, Yu, Zhang, Li, Chen, Yang, Bai, Youling, Li, Dan, Liu, Jinping, Gable, Philip, Yin, Huazhan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arousal
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Emotions
Facial Expression
Humans
Meta-analysis
Paradigms
Perceptions
Physiology
Psychology
Research methodology
Sound
Theoretical/Review
Time Perception
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Anecdotal experiences show that the human perception of time is subjective, and changes with one’s emotional state. Over the past 25 years, increasing empirical evidence has demonstrated that emotions distort time perception and usually result in overestimation. Yet, some inconsistencies deserve clarification. Specifically, it remains controversial how valence (positive/negative), arousal (high/low), stimulus type (scenic picture/facial expression/word/sound), and temporal paradigm (reproduction/estimation/discrimination) modulate the effect of emotion on time perception. Thus, the current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis to quantify evidence for these moderators. After searching the Web of Science, SpiScholar, and Google Scholar, 95 effect sizes from 31 empirical studies were calculated using Hedges’ g . The included studies involved 3,776 participants. The results a highlighted significant moderating effect of valence, arousal, stimulus type, and temporal paradigm. Specifically, negative valence tends to result in overestimation relative to positive valence; the increasing arousal leads to increasing temporal dilating; scenic picture, facial picture, and sound are more effective in inducing distortions than word; the overestimation can be better observed by discrimination and estimation paradigms relative to reproduction paradigms, and estimation paradigm is likely to be the most effective. These results suggest that the effect of emotion on time perception is influenced by valence, arousal, stimulus type, and temporal paradigm. These mitigating factors should be considered by scientists when studying time perception.
ISSN:1069-9384
1531-5320
DOI:10.3758/s13423-022-02148-3