NEWARK, Delaware: The COVID-19 pandemic, now in its 19th month, has meant different things to different people.
For some, it’s meant stress over new school and work regimes, or anxiety over the prospect of catching COVID-19 and dealing with the aftereffects of an infection.
But for others, it’s created space and freedom to pursue new passions or make decisions that had been put off.
Our upended lives – for better or for worse – also likely influenced our perception of time.
In June 2020, we presented initial evidence that an individual’s sense of time during the pandemic was closely related to their emotions.
People who reported feeling high levels of stress and nervousness in March and April 2020 also tended to feel that time was passing more slowly, but people who reported feeling high levels of happiness felt that time was passing more quickly. (Yes, believe it or not, there was a good chunk of people who enjoyed their time spent in lockdown.)
It turns out that even during a pandemic, time flies when you’re having fun.
With a year’s worth of data, we were able to see how people’s views on the progress of the pandemic were related to their sense of time, their emotional states and whether they behaved in ways intended to slow the spread of COVID-19.
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