Similar time distortions under the effect of emotion for durations of several minutes and a few seconds

Abstract This study examined the effect of emotion on the judgment of durations of several minutes compared with that of durations of a few seconds. Three experiments were performed on the temporal judgment of emotional stimuli lasting from 2 s to 6 min (Experiment 1) or from 2 to 6 min (Experiment 2 and 3). These involved emotional sounds (Experiment 1 and 2) or virtual reality emotional films (Experiment 3). The results showed an increase in the lengthening of the perceived duration as the level of arousal and negative valence of the emotional stimuli increased, both for the long durations of several minutes and for the shorter durations. However, the magnitude of the time distortion tended to decrease as the length of the duration increased because the affects experienced by the participants lost their intensity over time. Nonetheless, when the exposure to emotional stimuli was limited and the stimuli were sufficiently arousing, as in Experiments 2 and 3, people overestimated time across durations ranging from seconds to minutes.