Emotional pictures and time: The effects of arousal and valence on the perception of duration and the subjective passage of time

Previous studies have shown that emotional stimuli, such as pictures and sounds, can affect the perception of time. The present study investigated the effects of arousal and valence of standardized emotional pictures on two different subjective experiences of time: duration and the passage of time (POT). Emotional pictures were presented for 2, 4, or 6 s, and after each presentation participants provided either a duration or a POT judgment (in different experimental halves) as well as valence and arousal ratings on visual analog scales. In contrast to previous findings, the results showed no effects of arousal and valence on duration judgments; however, there were significant effects of arousal and valence on POT judgments, with both higher arousal and valence leading to an accelerated POT. The absence of arousal and valence effects on duration judgments in the present study could be related to the fact that pictures with extreme content were not included and thus the entire spectrum of possible arousal and valence values was not tested. Importantly, however, the different patterns of result for duration and POT judgments align with a growing body of research indicating that the perception of duration and the experience of the POT are not necessarily directly linked. Furthermore, the present study highlights the importance of collecting and analyzing current affective ratings even when using standardized emotional pictures, as the current ratings differed significantly from the norm values of the standardized picture sets.