Citation

Droit-Volet S, Gil S. Cogn. Emot. 2015; 30(4): 687-699.

Affiliation

a Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale et COgnitive (LaPSCO), UMR 6024, Université Clermont Auvergne, CNRS , Université Blaise Pascal , Clermont-Ferrand , France.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/02699931.2015.1023180

PMID

25817441

Abstract

We examined the effects of emotional bodily expressions on the perception of time. Participants were shown bodily expressions of fear, happiness and sadness in a temporal bisection task featuring different stimulus duration ranges. Stimulus durations were judged to be longer for bodily expressions of fear than for those of sadness, whereas no significant difference was observed between sad and happy postures. In addition, the magnitude of the lengthening effect of fearful versus sad postures increased with duration range. These results suggest that the perception of fearful bodily expressions increases the level of arousal which, in turn, speeds up the internal clock system underlying the representation of time. The effect of bodily expressions on time perception is thus consistent with findings for other highly arousing emotional stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions.

Language: en