Emotional time lengthening carries over to subsequent neutral events

The perceived time can shrink or expand for emotional stimuli. Converging evidence suggests that emotional
time distortions are rooted in the emotional states of the timing agents because emotional stimuli can influence
the timing of simultaneous neutral events. As emotional states are transitory, we investigated if time modulating
emotional states also influence timing of subsequent neutral events. In each trial, we induced different valence
and arousal levels by using affective vibrotactile patterns before participants judged the duration of neutral
auditory tones. Compared to neutral patterns, affective patterns modulated participants’ time perception of the
subsequent tones. We observed an interaction between arousal and valence: Pleasant-Low arousal patterns
expanded the timing of subsequent neutral events more than Unpleasant-Low arousal patterns while Pleasant and
Unpleasant-High arousal led to a similar temporal expansion. Our results indicate time modulating effects of
emotional stimuli are due to changed emotional states and influence time perception likely until the underlying
state decays.