Time flies when we read taboo words.
Does time fly or stand still when one is reading highly arousing words? A temporal bisection task was used to test the effects of sexual taboo words on time perception. Forty participants judged the duration of sexual taboo, high-arousal negative, high-arousal positive, low-arousal negative, low-arousal positive, and category-related neutral words. The results support the hypothesis that sexual taboo stimuli receive more attention and reduce the perceived time that has passed ("time flies")-the duration of high sexual taboo words was underestimated for taboo-word stimuli relative to all other word types. The findings are discussed in the context of internal clock theories of time perception.
Tipples
Jason
J
Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, England. j.tipples@hull.ac.uk
D000293:Adolescent; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013609:Taboo; D013998:Time Perception; D055815:Young Adult