Musical Tempo and Time Perception in a Gymnasium

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of fast and slow music on retrospective estimates of time duration in a university gymnasium, testing the hypothetical positive relationship between the perceived duration of a given event period and the amount of information that is encoded within it. Since fast music contains more information within a given time period, people who attended the gymnasium whilst fast music was played should perceive themselves as having spent longer therein than people who attended in the presence of slow music. To test this, fast or slow music was played in the gymnasium on two consecutive days, and as they left, participants were informed of their time of entry and asked to estimate the present time. The results showed that musical tempo did not influence time duration estimates in any one particular direction, but that slow music led to a greater degree of inaccuracy in estimations than did fast music. Subjects also tended to underestimate the amount of time they spent in the gymnasium overall, and this was more pronounced for female than male subjects. These findings are discussed in terms of their commercial implications and the congruence between music and the listening situation.