Why Time Expansion Experiences Make Seconds Feel Like Minutes

We recognise that time can feel as though it moves at varying rates depending on the circumstances. When visiting somewhere unfamiliar, for instance, time often appears to drag: seven days abroad can seem considerably longer than a week spent at home.

It may also seem to crawl when we are bored or experiencing pain. By contrast, it appears to race by when we are wholly immersed in something, whether playing music or chess, painting, or dancing. More broadly, most people say that time seems to accelerate as they grow older.

Yet these shifts in our perception of time are relatively modest. Our experience can change far more dramatically. In my new book, I discuss what I term "time expansion experiences" – occasions in which a few seconds can feel like several minutes.

Why our perception of time changes

Exactly why time appears to speed up or slow down remains somewhat puzzling. Some researchers, myself included, believe the milder changes in time perception are connected to the way we process information.

The general principle is that the more information our minds handle – including perceptions, sensations and thoughts – the more slowly time appears to pass. Time moves slowly for children because their world is full of novelty.

Unfamiliar settings elongate time because they are new to us. Immersion shortens it because attention narrows and the mind becomes quiet, with relatively few thoughts flowing through it. Boredom, on the other hand, makes time feel extended because an unfocused mind becomes filled with a huge volume of mental chatter.

Time expansion experiences

Time expansion experiences, or Tees, may happen in accidents and emergencies, including car crashes, falls and attacks. During a time expansion experience, time can seem to expand by many orders of magnitude. My research has shown that around 85 percent of people have experienced at least one Tee.

Approximately half of Tees take place in accident and emergency circumstances. People in these situations are frequently astonished by how much time they seem to have available to think and respond. Indeed, many are persuaded that the expansion of time prevented a serious injury or even saved their life, as it enabled them to take protective action that would normally be impossible.

For instance, a woman who described a Tee in which she escaped a metal barrier falling on her car explained that a "slowing down of the moment" enabled her to "decide how to escape the falling metal on us".

Tees are also frequently reported in sport. One participant, for example, recounted a Tee while playing ice hockey, when "the play which seemed to last for about ten minutes all occurred in the space of about eight seconds". They can also arise in periods of stillness and presence, including meditation or time spent in natural environments.

Some of the most intense Tees, however, are associated with psychedelic substances such as LSD or ayahuasca. Around 10 percent of the Tees in my collection are related to psychedelics. A man told me that, while taking LSD, he checked the stopwatch on his phone and "the hundredths of a second were moving as slow as seconds normally move. It was really intense time dilation," he said.

Explanations for time expansion experiences

What might account for this? One proposal links such experiences to the release of noradrenaline – a hormone and neurotransmitter – during emergencies, as part of the "fight or flight" response. But this explanation does not sit easily with the peaceful wellbeing that people commonly describe during Tees.

Although their lives may be at risk, people generally report feeling unusually calm and at ease. A woman who had a Tee after falling from a horse, for example, said: "The whole experience seemed to last for minutes. I was ultra-calm, unconcerned that the horse still hadn't recovered its balance and quite possibly could fall on top of me."

The noradrenaline account also fails to explain the many Tees that occur in tranquil settings, including deep meditation or a feeling of oneness with nature.

I have also considered whether Tees could be an evolutionary adaptation. Perhaps our ancestors acquired the capacity to slow time in dangerous situations – encounters with lethal wild animals or natural disasters, for example – to increase their likelihood of survival. But the same objection applies: it does not explain why Tees happen outside emergencies.

A third suggestion is that Tees are not genuine experiences at all, but memory-based illusions. According to this view, emergencies sharpen awareness, allowing us to register more perceptions than usual. Those perceptions are then stored in memory, and, when the event is recalled, the additional memories give the impression that time moved slowly.

But in many Tees, people are convinced they had additional time in which to think and act. The apparent expansion permitted a complicated sequence of thoughts and actions that could not have occurred had time continued at its usual pace.

In a recent, as yet unpublished, poll involving 280 Tees, I found that fewer than 3 percent of participants considered the experience an illusion. Some 87 percent regarded it as a real experience occurring in the present, while 10 percent were undecided.

Altered states of consciousness

In my opinion, altered states of consciousness are central to understanding Tees. The abrupt shock of an accident may interrupt our usual psychological processes and trigger a sudden change in consciousness. In sport, powerful altered states can emerge through what I call "super-absorption".

Normally, absorption causes time to seem faster, as it does in flow states when we are deeply engaged in a task. However, when absorption becomes exceptionally intense after an extended period of sustained concentration, the reverse can happen: time slows down radically.

Altered states of consciousness may also reshape our sense of identity and the usual feeling that we are separate from the world. As psychologist Marc Wittmann has observed, our experience of time is closely connected to our sense of self.

Ordinarily, we feel as if we inhabit an inner mental space, while the world exists "out there" beyond it. A defining characteristic of intense altered states is that this feeling of separation diminishes. Rather than feeling enclosed within our minds, we experience a connection with our surroundings.

As the boundary between ourselves and the world becomes less distinct, our perception of time expands as well. We move beyond ordinary consciousness and enter a different time-world.

Steve Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University

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