Cognitive Determinants of Consumers’ Time Perceptions: The Impact of Resources Required and Available

This study examines cognitive processes believed to be responsible for systematic distortions in the subjective experience of time. In two experiments, subjects were exposed to mock radio ads containing congruent or incongruent information and asked to estimate the ads’ durations retrospectively. Consistent with a resource‐matching hypothesis, perceived time depended on the interplay of cognitive resources required and available. When cognitive resources required match cognitive resources available (at either high or low levels), time estimates were longer than when resources were mismatched. Evidence also suggests that durations may be inferred from the amount of information reconstructed from and linked to a time interval.