Anticipation of sexually arousing visual event leads to overestimation of elapsed time

Abstract

Subjective estimates of duration are affected by emotional expectations about the future. For example, temporal intervals preceding a threatening event such as an electric shock are estimated as longer than intervals preceding a non-threatening event. However, it has not been unequivocally shown that such temporal overestimation occurs also when anticipating a similarly arousing but appealing event. In this study, we examined how anticipation of visual erotic material influenced perceived duration. Participants did a temporal bisection task, where they estimated durations of visual cues relative to previously learned short and long standard durations. The color of the to-be-timed visual cue signalled either a chance of seeing a preferred erotic picture at the end of the interval or certainty of seeing a neutral grey bar instead. The results showed that anticipating an appealing event increased the likelihood of estimating the cue duration as long as compared to the anticipation of a grey bar. Further analyses showed that this temporal overestimation effect was stronger for those who rated the anticipated erotic pictures as more sexually arousing. The results thus indicate that anticipation of appealing events has a similar dilating effect on perceived duration as does the anticipation of aversive events.

Fig 1. Trial procedure with timing information.

Fig 2. Probabilities of cues perceived as long in the neutral (no anticipation), anticipation+blank, and anticipation+picture condition as a function of cue duration.

The colored dots represent average probabilities of the “long” responses in each cue duration and each cue condition.The three curves present psychometric functions fitted to the binary bisection task responses. The vertical lines crossing the curves represent 50% bisection points and their error bars refer to 95% confidence intervals obtained with a parametric bootstrap method.

Fig 3. Comparison of the BPs among the three cue conditions.

Dark red dots and their error bars refer to MLM-based estimated margin means and their standard errors, respectively. P-values refer to planned contrasts between the estimated margin means. Colored dots refer to the “raw” BP values used in the MLM model as predicted outcome. Overlying boxplot Figs show the medians (black horizontal line) as well as lower and upper quartiles and whiskers of the distributions.

Fig 4. Simple slopes showing the linear relationships between sexual arousal scores and estimated temporal bisection point in two cue conditions: Neutral and anticipation+blank.

The lines represent regression slopes calculated based on the MLM coefficients of fixed effects. Sexual arousal was standardised around the grand mean.