Steve Taylor: We all know that time seems to pass at different speeds in different situations. For example, time seems to pass slowly when we travel to unknown places. A week abroad seems much longer than a week at home.
Time seems to pass slowly when we are bored or in pain. It seems to speed up when we are absorbed, such as when we play music, chess, paint, or dance. More generally, most people say that as they age, time seems to speed up.
However, these differences in time perception are quite delicate. Our experience of time can change in much more radical ways. In my modern book, I describe what I call “time expansion experiences” – where seconds can stretch into minutes.
The reasons why time can speed up and ponderous down remain a mystery. Some researchers, including myself, believe that delicate changes in time perception are related to information processing.
The general rule is that the more information – such as perceptions, sensations, thoughts – our mind processes, the slower time appears to pass. Time passes slowly for children because they live in a world of modern things.
New environments take longer due to unfamiliarity. Absorption shortens time because our attention becomes narrowed and our mind becomes still, so few thoughts pass through. Boredom, on the other hand, increases time because our unfocused minds are filled with so many thoughts.
Experiences related to the expansion of time
Time expansion experiences (or Tees) may occur in an accident or emergency situation, such as a car accident, fall, or attack. In time expansion experiments, time appears to expand by many orders of magnitude. My research shows that about 85% of people had at least one t-shirt.
About half of tees occur in accidents and emergencies. In such situations, people are often surprised by the amount of time they have to think and act.
In fact, many people believe that the expansion of time has protected them from sedate injury and even saved their lives – because it allowed them to take preventive actions that would normally be impossible.
For example, a woman who reported a T-shirt in which she avoided a metal barrier falling on her car told me how “slowing down the moment” allowed her to “decide how to escape the metal falling on us.”
Jerseys are also common in sports. For example, a participant described a T-shirt incident during an ice hockey game where “a game that seemed to last about ten minutes happened in about eight seconds.” Tees also appear in moments of stillness and presence, during meditation or in natural surroundings.
However, some of the most extreme Tee are associated with psychedelic substances such as LSD or ayahuasca. In my T-shirt collection, about 10% are related to psychedelics. One man told me that during his LSD experience, he looked at the stopwatch on his phone and “the hundredths of a second passed as slowly as usual. It was a really intense extension of time,” he said.
But why? One theory is that these experiences are related to the release of norepinephrine (both a hormone and a neurotransmitter) during emergencies, which is related to the fight-or-flight mechanism. However, this doesn't match the peaceful feeling that people usually describe in Tees.
Even though their lives may be at risk, people usually feel strangely composed and relaxed. For example, a woman who fell off a horse told me, “The whole experience seemed to last a few minutes.
I was extremely calm, I wasn't worried that the horse still hadn't regained its balance and it was quite possible that it would fall on me.” The norepinephrine theory also does not fit with the fact that many Tees occur in peaceful situations, such as deep meditation or oneness with nature.
Another theory I've been considering is that T-shirts are an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps our ancestors developed the ability to ponderous down time in emergency situations – such as encounters with deadly wild animals or natural disasters – to escalate their chances of survival. However, the above argument applies here as well: it doesn't fit non-emergency situations where Tees occur.
The third theory is that the T-shirts are not real experiences, but illusions of memories. In emergency situations, this theory goes, our awareness becomes heightened so that we take in more perceptions than usual.
These perceptions become encoded in our memories, so when we recall the emergency, the additional memories make it seem as if time passed slowly.
However, on many Tees, people feel confident that they have had extra time to think and act. The expansion of time made it possible to assemble a series of thoughts and actions that would not have been possible if time had flowed at normal speed.
In a recent (yet unpublished) survey of 280 Tees, I found that less than 3% of participants believed the experience was an illusion. About 87% thought it was a real experience that took place in the present, and 10% were undecided.
Altered states of consciousness
In my opinion, the key to understanding Tees is altered states of consciousness. The sudden shock of an accident can disrupt our normal mental processes, causing a sudden change in consciousness. In sports, intense altered states are created by what I call “superabsorption.”
Absorption tends to make time pass faster – as in the case of flow when we are absorbed in a task. However, when absorption becomes particularly intense, after a long period of continuous concentration, the opposite occurs and time slows down dramatically.
Altered states of consciousness can also affect our sense of identity and our normal sense of separation from the world. As psychologist Marc Wittmann noted, our sense of time is closely linked to our sense of self.
We usually feel like we live in our mental space and the world is “out there” on the other side. One of the main features of intense altered states is the disappearance of the sense of separation. We no longer feel locked in our minds, but we feel connected to our surroundings.
This means that the boundary between us and the world is disappearing. In the process, our sense of time expands. We slip beyond our normal consciousness and move into another world of time.
Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University
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