Time flies

How does time seem to you? Is it flying by? Is the past a mere memory? Does the future seem as if it is rushing toward you, or perhaps you are rushing towards it? What new research has shown is that our perception of time is shaped by our experience of space and that means that we perceive the future and the past in very different ways.

Previous research has told us that people feel closer to objects that they are moving toward than those they are moving away from, even if they are the same distance from those two objects. The theory is that our experience of the concrete spatial world informs our experience of the abstract world of time so that an hour in the future seems closer than an hour in the past.

In this study subjects wore a headset that showed them a visual display so that they felt part of a scene on a two-lane road lined with trees, streetlights, and buildings. Some of the subjects experienced the scene as if they were walking toward a fountain at the end of the road while others experienced it as if they were walking backwards. Later the subjects were asked to estimate how far away a date that was three weeks in the future, or one that was three weeks in the past, seemed to be to them.

Only the subjects who moved forward in the scene reported that the future date seemed closer while the subjects who moved backwards were variable in their response.

So since we generally move forwards physically in life (your knees just aren’t built for constant backwards movement) we tend to feel closer to the future because we feel like we are moving towards it.

The researchers say that this is a very useful thing because it helps you to prepare for future events that seem more imminent. This begs the question though; are we learning the lessons of history or even of an hour ago? Perhaps we need to develop egret-knees and spend a bit more time feeling closer to our past if we are to fully understand our present rather than just running headlong into our future? It could make for an interesting perceptual experiment in any case: try moving backwards for a while and see if it changes your perception of things. If nothing else you might bump into some interesting people…just don’t try it near a stairwell.