Does fear really slow down time?

Wow, that was really interesting.

Gah! What a horrible, horrible experience! I hate, hate heights! But it seems like all they measured was reported estimates of fall time, after the fact. That's fine, but wouldn't it be more useful to measure whether you can actually perceive more, or make decisions more rapidly, or some such functional task in addition? That is, they said in the video that sped-up thought processes are useful, but they're not actually measuring anything that's happening during the panic...

I have been for years working with a simpler, less dangerous, gauge of the sense of the passage of time. I think it is also more convincing than the drop study since hundreds, thousands, or millions of people can try it for themselves all at the same time and get lots and lots of data.

You may have heard of the driver safety scheme called the four-second rule. Keep four seconds behind the car ahead of you and you will be at a safe following distance from it, regardless of your speed. (Assume the cars are matched in speed, and hope nobody cuts into the gap.)

The tricky part is correctly estimating four seconds. If you and the car ahead are the only cars on the road, you will have little trouble getting it just about right as you mentally count four seconds from the time the lead car passes a point until you pass the same point.

However, in heavy traffic -- with several lanes all occupied and moving at highway speeds, and people moving at different rates with different driving styles, and cars jockeying for position -- the expectation is for your mental timing to compress, so that your four-count takes less than 4 real seconds. Compression (called so because the timing 'ticks' get closer together) would lead the worried driver to misjudge their following distance by clocking the 4-count too quickly, giving a false sense of security. The more compression, the more danger, and the falser the sense of security.

When you really need the scheme working for you the most is when it is hardest to implement accurately. That's not a fault of the scheme: the fault is in our neuroendocrine system. When we get nervous our clock runs fast.

I have a stopwatch in my car, and the only use for it is checking my estimation of 4 seconds.

Results? I went in to work one Saturday morning at 5:40 on the 215 freeway (in Los Angeles County) and practically had the whole thing to myself. When I did find a car to follow, my 4-count ran I think 4.8 seconds. A little embarrassing, but I was alone, so who knew?

Sometimes in afternoon rush hour traffic, my 4-counts have been as brief as 1.6 seconds -- and those were when I knew I was going to be compared to a stopwatch because I was running the stopwatch on myself. Even though I was really trying to do my best, I could inadvertently collapse my safe distance to 4/10 of what it was supposed to be.

Very interesting study. Thanks for sharing.

To more effectively create fear, they should have released the people unexpectedly. They could have, perhaps, said something like "OK, so the drop is going to happen in a couple minutes, but first we need to go over some precautionary info. Now, when -" and DROP.. Maybe (and this is the real evil side of me coming out, teehee) they could have even acted like something went wrong just prior to the unexpected drop. Something like "ok, the net is almost set up, but it'll be a couple more minutes", and then "OH SHIT!" as they're released into what they think is a net-less fall.

Teehee....

I thought up another way this could be measured. I would have participants click a button at regular, about half-second, intervals, and record whether the clicks got closer together when they fell.

Bret, that might only measure the fact that people are panicking, not time perception. Sort of along the lines of "ohmigodohmigodohmigodclickbuttonclickbuttonclickbutton", I mean. How would one tell if it is genuine time perception or just lack of ability to concentrate on the trivial task of spacing out clicks while clicking in frenzied reflex?

I think this is fascinating, and estimation of how long it took to fall is a good first step. Oh yeah, and I also think this looks like wicked fun and would love to try it!

I think they glossed over the most important feature of the time-expansion. Right towards the end the narrator mentions that in those situations people become 'focused on the moment'. It is possible to get the same time-expansion effect, without adrenaline, just by really being in the moment, aware of your surroundings and self. It's not something emphasized in the West, but it's pretty standard to any sort of meditation practice.

In the video it looked as if they did this:

- bring the person up to a platform
- raise the net of the ground (to avoid subject smashification)
- drop the person into the net
- *lower the net to the ground*
- have the person estimate their dropping time from the platform to the net

Shouldn't we expect them to overestimate their times, since we have increased the distance between the platform and the net?

I feel like perhaps we've been cheated out of a thorough explanation of the study though. To give 'scientist guy' the benefit of the doubt (and he by the way, completely bothered me, but in any case...) it appeared as if there was more testing going on than just the 'take this stopwatch and record how long you thought it took'. I imagine just showing that question on this clip was easier for our viewing pleasure, and that more extensive questioning and studying would take place later, in an environment far less film-able.
It shows the subjects putting the weird things on their wrists which were never really explained, but at some point the neuroscientist is saying to a subject "Keep looking at the screen, keep looking at the screen!" and she appears to be looking at the rather obtrusive thing on her wrist. So perhaps there was some sort of image or something on the screen that the subjects were asked to look at on the way down, and then asked to comment on in retrospective, much as someone in a car accident (or who witnessed one) would continuously run over what they saw in their minds to gather details as to what happened.
So I'd be interested in knowing if that was an aspect of the study we just weren't let in on in the clip, just because it doesn't make interesting T.V.
Does anyone know if this is true? Does he have a paper of the study presented in a more scientific light than just a clip that explains what he was doing and what he found a little more thoroughly?

The fact that most of the comments are FAR more crafted and extense than the post makes me laugh now I know about the "study"... great work, Dave!

very interesting clip/study indeed! but i agree it seems like a fair amount was left out - though you can only fit so much in 5 minutes.

I wonder if an individual's rating of how scary the drop was would be related to the perception of time and it's dilation? or maybe if they were dropped several times will they find the later drops were faster?

and Tim, dropping at random intervals is just evil! especially if you let them think something has gone wrong.