Audit expert: Li Xianhong
National second-level psychological counselor
I don't know how everyone lived this year's Spring Festival? Is there any pleasure in eating, having fun, and resting in good health?
When it comes to holidays, everyone seems to have a common perception - it's a holiday, eyes are closed and open, and it's time to go to work! Why do you always feel that the Spring Festival holiday is as short as 7 days and as long as more than 10 days, which is faster than the usual working day?
Source 丨 Network
Haven't played much, the holiday "sigh" is gone all of a sudden! holiday! If you have the ability, you don't go!
In fact, this kind of "holiday fast" delusion is based on psychology and biology!
What is a holiday myth?
Psychologists generally believe that when people are exposed to new things or experience explosive enrichment activities for a short time, they feel that time passes much faster than usual.
Because during this event, more intensive information bombardment than daily will turn into more memories, and daily work is single, and there are relatively few events that need to be remembered.
Holiday memory points increased
Source 丨 surging
Psychologists call this phenomenon the "holiday myth." The study found that whenever there is a holiday, people have 6-9 experiences per day that are worth remembering, equivalent to the number of memories for 2 weeks of daily life.
On the subject of the passage of time, our brains use different methods of judgment, and the assessment of the length of time is determined by the number of events in a certain period of time, and the more event memory points, the faster time passes.
For example, if you play with your friends and enjoy activities and games on a certain holiday, you will feel that time is particularly fast, but if you have nothing to do, you will feel that time is slow.
Is the brain deleting memories?
Of course, some people don't want to walk around, and it is the most comfortable at home during the holidays, how to explain this?
Our brains are very good at packaging time, as if the time distribution of different things is not fair. Sometimes the acceleration of the sense of time is experienced in the same time, and sometimes the perception is slowed down under extreme conditions.
To use a counterexample to illustrate, when dangerous things such as bungee jumping and car accidents come, the brain perceives a great threat, and the brain "amygdala" will enter high-speed operation, requisitioning the neural pathways or energy of the rest of the brain to cope with the current situation. This mechanism ensures that in the face of an emergency, the brain will preserve richer memory details and feelings in exchange for the opportunity to "make a living", which brings a sense of experience of slowing down time.
At this time, the brain seems to review the whole life
Source 丨Huhu
Therefore, in the face of holidays or other leisure and entertainment activities, the brain will simplify and delete this part of the memory, reduce the burden on the brain, and the ultimate feeling at this time is that time flies.
Source 丨Li Yunqi detoxification
In addition, the basal ganglia of the brain can integrate nerve impulses emitted by different cells, improving the accuracy of the timing of the event. For example, if you keep reminding yourself, "How did it only take a minute?" This table goes so slowly...", in fact, our attention is more focused on time, and the frequency of cellular nerve impulses is higher, so that the perception of time is more accurate, even exaggerated. But when we are not in this part, the number of nerve impulses decreases, so the concept of time begins to blur and it feels like time is flying by.
An unexpected surprise speeds up time?
There is another theory that can be used to explain "where has time gone?" ”
Neurobiologists have long had the idea that people engage in continuous activity through rewards and punishments, and that the mechanisms behind it are linked to the perception of time.
Sam Gershman, a neurobiology scientist at Harvard University, once said, "Happy times are short-lived, and it's more accurate to say that if you're happier than you think, time is short." ”
A bonus
An article published in Nature Neuroscience by Israeli scientist IdoToren et al. corroborates this claim. At the same time, studies have found that the brain will constantly make predictions and expectations of what is going to happen, and make certain psychological assessments, which will determine our time perception.
In past studies, we have found that dopamine plays a vital role in perceived time, and when we receive an unexpected reward, or prediction error, dopamine increases, triggering the body's reward mechanism.
So the team of scientists conducted the following experiment - asking the subject to look at the number on the screen, which is a consistent "0" in most cases, and in rare cases, the next number that appears will be a positive integer, at which point the subject will receive an additional reward. At the same time, the display time of the second number changes, and the subject needs to answer which lasts longer between 0 and this positive integer.
Occasional irritation (e.g., occasional holidays) is most effective in stimulating dopamine secretion
Source 丨 Douban Reading
Experimental results show that when the bonus is obtained unexpectedly, the subjects will feel that the positive integer lasts longer, because the duration of the short-term memory stored in the short-term memory is enlarged by accelerating the sense of time, and as the reward amount increases, the subject's perception of time will be more obvious.
Therefore, time is in the perception of happiness, unconsciously passing.
Now everyone knows how the holiday disappeared, whether it is a rich holiday life or a leisure time that makes us happy, the role of the holiday is to let us adjust our state and relax our brains. At this time, the day of work is much closer, are you ready?
The reproduced content represents the views of the author only
Does not represent the position of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Source: Digital Beijing Science Center
EDIT: just_iu