Emotional time lengthening carries over to subsequent neutral events

The perceived time of events can shrink or expand with emotion. Converging evidence suggests that the time modulation of emotions roots in the emotional states of the timing agents and their influence is not limited to the emotional stimuli themselves but extends to 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 likely due to changed emotional states and influence time perception until the underlying state decays.