Personality, time estimation and time experience

From studies involving several hundred psychiatric patients and control subjects, certain consistent findings emerged with regard to the verbal estimation of 30 (and 20) minute intervals.1) Control subjects give estimates centering on a figure slightly less than 30 minutes. This agreed with the general finding in the literature that “filled” intervals are estimated as slightly less than the clock period.2) Hysterics, psychopaths and manics gave relatively large estimates; depressed and anxious neurotics, together with melancholics, gave relatively small estimates.3) Holding psychiatric diagnosis constant, individual variations in estimate were significantly associated with psychomotor speed, certain psychophysiological variables, spiral after-effect duration, vigilance task error.4) With a mixed psychiatric group, individual variations in estimate were positively associated with a revised version of Cattell's “dissociation” personality factor.5) Certain of the studies also included productive and verbal estimate of a 30 seconds interval.6) A discussion of the findings has been made with an attempt at interpretation.