Time

:For alternate uses of "time", see Time (disambiguation) or see TIME (magazine).

Psychology

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Different people may judge identical lengths of time quite differently. Time can "fly"; that is, a long period of time can seem to go by very quickly. Likewise, time can seem to "drag," as in when one performs a boring task.

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Time appears to go fast when sleeping, or, to put it differently, time seems not to have passed while asleep. Time also appears to pass more quickly as one gets older. For example, a day for a child seems to last longer than a day for an adult. One possible reason for this is that with increasing age, each segment of time is an increasingly smaller percentage of the person's total experience.

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Altered states of consciousness are sometimes characterised by a different estimation of time. Some psychoactive substances--such as entheogens--may also dramatically alter a person's temporal judgement.

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In explaining his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying that although sitting next to a pretty girl for an hour feels like a minute, placing one's hand on a hot stove for a minute feels like an hour.

Related Topics:
Theory of relativity - Albert Einstein

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Use of time

The use of time is an important issue in understanding human behaviour, education, and travel behaviour. The question concerns how time is allocated across a number of activities (such as time spent at home, at work, shopping, etc.). Time use changes with technology, as the television or the Internet created new opportunities to use time in different ways. However, some aspects of time use are relatively stable over long periods of time, such as the amount of time spent traveling to work, which despite major changes in transport, has been observed to be about 20-30 minutes one-way for a large number of cities over a long period of time. This has led to the disputed time budget hypothesis.

Related Topics:
Human behaviour - Education - Travel behaviour - Technology - Television - Internet - Transport - Budget

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Arlie Russell Hochschild and Norbert Elias have written on the subject from a sociological perspective.

Related Topics:
Arlie Russell Hochschild - Norbert Elias

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