Difficulty: Intermediate | Prerequisites: Introductory psychology, basic familiarity with research methods (Likert scales, correlation, regression).
This topic sits at the intersection of cognitive psychology and cross-cultural research. It examines why people commonly feel that annual events such as Christmas and Ramadan seem to arrive faster each year, and what psychological mechanisms drive that sensation. The study draws on established frameworks around time perception, memory, attention, and emotional wellbeing. If you have not yet covered the basics of prospective and retrospective memory, or the role of attention in cognitive processing, it is worth reviewing those first. The material here extends familiar short-epoch time perception research into longer durations (year-to-year), which is a relatively under-explored area.
Most people believe annual events like Christmas and Ramadan arrive faster each year, and this belief is not just a saying. Research across the UK and Iraq shows it is predicted by how much you enjoy the event, how often you think about time, and how well your prospective memory works. Older age does not reliably speed up the sensation, which challenges a widespread assumption.
Passage of time judgement (POTJ)
A subjective rating of how quickly or slowly time feels like it is passing, typically measured on a Likert scale. In simple terms, this is your personal sense of whether time is flying or dragging.
Prospective memory
The ability to remember to carry out intended actions in the future, e.g. remembering to buy milk on the way home. Think of it as your "to-do list" memory. Measured here via the PRMQ.
Retrospective memory
The ability to recall information from the past, e.g. recognising a place you have visited before. Think of it as your "what happened" memory. Also measured via the PRMQ.
Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ)
A 16-item self-report scale (8 prospective, 8 retrospective items) measuring the frequency of everyday memory slips. Higher scores mean more errors. Participants rate items on a 5-point scale from "very often" to "never."
WHOQOL-BREF
The World Health Organization Quality of Life assessment (brief version). A 26-item scale with four subscales: physical health, psychological health, social relationships, and environmental health. Used here instead of standalone anxiety or depression measures because it captures broader wellbeing dimensions.
Attentional focus (in time perception)
The degree to which cognitive resources are directed toward monitoring time. When spare cognitive capacity is available, more attention goes to time and it feels slower. When you are absorbed in a task, little attention goes to time and it feels faster.
Time pressure
The subjective sensation of not having enough time, typically arising from deadlines or competing demands. Unlike boredom-related clock-watching, time pressure makes time feel like it is passing quickly.
Memory storage model
The theory that retrospective time perception is a function of how many distinct memories are stored from a period. More stored memories make a period feel longer in hindsight. In simple terms, a year packed with memorable events feels longer looking back.
Contextual change model
An extension of the memory storage model proposing that memories containing high degrees of contextual or emotional change produce longer perceived durations than those with little change.
Epoch (in time perception research)
A defined period of time being judged, ranging from short epochs (minutes, hours, a single day) to long epochs (months, years, the gap between annual events).
How mood shapes the speed of time
Positive mood is consistently associated with the sensation that time is passing more quickly than normal.
Negative affect (anxiety, depression, sadness) is associated with the sensation that time is passing more slowly than normal.
These patterns have been replicated across pre-COVID-19 laboratory studies, COVID-19 lockdown surveys, and clinical populations.
Clinical and wellbeing evidence
In clinical groups, depression is reliably linked to the experience of time passing slowly.
Lower wellbeing and lower quality of life are also associated with a slower perceived passage of time.
During the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people reported the period felt longer than 12 months. This lengthening effect was associated with greater depression, anxiety, and social isolation (Ogden and Piovesan, 2022).
Event-specific emotion vs. general wellbeing
The current study found that it is the emotional appraisal of the specific event (how much you enjoy Christmas or Ramadan) that predicts time distortion, rather than your general quality of life.
This is an important distinction: generic wellbeing measures (physical health, environmental health) were not consistent predictors of how quickly annual events seemed to arrive.
The implication is that the emotional charge attached to a particular event matters more than your overall mood or life circumstances when it comes to long-epoch time judgements.
Retrospective time judgements and memory storage
When judging time in retrospect (looking back on a period after the fact), perceived duration is a function of how many distinct memories you can recall from that period.
More stored memories from a given interval make it feel longer in hindsight. Fewer memories make it feel shorter.
The content of memories matters too: memories with high contextual change or emotional change produce longer perceived durations than memories of routine, unchanging experiences.
Prospective time judgements and attentional monitoring
When judging time prospectively (you know in advance that you will need to judge the duration), increased memory load and information processing load are associated with shorter perceived durations.
This is because cognitive resources are diverted away from time monitoring.
The effect reverses for retrospective judgements: high memory load during the event produces more stored information, which makes the period feel longer looking back.
Memory impairment and time acceleration
If memory impairment reduces the number of distinct memories formed or recalled across a year, retrospective memory theory predicts the year would feel like it passed quickly.
This is the theoretical link between poor memory function and the sensation that annual events come around faster.
Crucially, the study found that prospective memory errors (not retrospective ones) predicted the sensation. This was unexpected given memory storage theory, and may reflect the future-focused nature of the question: participants were asked whether the upcoming event felt like it was arriving sooner, which involves projecting forward as well as recalling past events.
Cognitive load and time monitoring
The amount of attention paid to time depends on cognitive resources available.
Low cognitive load (boredom, waiting) leaves spare resources for time processing, making time feel slower.
High cognitive load (engaging tasks, absorption) diverts resources away from time processing, making time feel faster.
Time pressure flips the usual pattern
When a deadline is looming and you feel you do not have "enough time," you experience time pressure.
Time pressure increases temporal awareness, but unlike boredom-related clock-watching, it makes time feel like it is passing quickly.
This is a key distinction: both boredom and time pressure increase attention to time, but they produce opposite subjective experiences of speed.
Annual events as deadlines
Christmas and Ramadan function as deadlines in their own right: people prepare gifts, food, decorations, or religious observances in the weeks leading up to them.
The preparation creates a prospective memory burden (things to remember to do) and heightened temporal awareness (awareness of how much time is left).
The study's data was collected roughly two months before each event, right in the thick of preparation. The time pressure and prospective memory load at that point likely contributed to the sensation that the event was arriving quickly.
This explains why attention to time and prospective memory errors, rather than retrospective memory errors, were the consistent predictors.
The time-pressure mechanism described here is the same one at work when a project deadline approaches at work and the final week seems to vanish. Event planners, retail marketers, and anyone managing seasonal logistics operates under the same psychological conditions that make Christmas and Ramadan feel like they arrive sooner each year. Understanding that prospective memory load and temporal awareness drive this sensation can help with practical time management: if the "time is flying" feeling is partly about having too many future-oriented tasks loaded in memory, breaking preparation into earlier, smaller steps may reduce both the memory burden and the subjective acceleration.
"Time speeds up as you get older." This is the most common misconception. The study found no reliable association between older age (55+) and faster passage of time for annual events. In Iraq, younger age was actually associated with greater agreement that Ramadan comes around more quickly. The relationship between age and time perception is far less straightforward than the popular belief suggests.
"Retrospective memory is the key memory system for long-epoch time perception." Memory storage models predict that retrospective memory should be the dominant factor, since you are looking back over the past year. The study found the opposite: prospective memory errors were the significant predictor. This likely reflects the future-focused framing of the question (is the next event arriving sooner?) and the prospective memory burden of event preparation.
"Paying more attention to time always makes it feel slower." This holds for boredom and clock-watching situations, but the study shows that attention to time in the context of time pressure (deadlines, event preparation) is associated with time feeling faster. The direction of the effect depends on the context.
"General happiness or life satisfaction determines how fast time feels." The study found that generic quality of life measures (physical, psychological, environmental health) were mostly not significant predictors. What mattered was event-specific enjoyment: how much you personally enjoy Christmas or Ramadan.
⚠️ The three consistent predictors across both cultures: attention to time, event enjoyment, and prospective memory errors. Be able to name and explain all three.
⚠️ The age finding runs counter to common belief. Expect a question that tests whether you know older age was not associated with faster time perception in this study.
⚠️ Know the difference between prospective and retrospective memory, and why prospective memory mattered here (future-focused question, event-preparation burden) while retrospective memory did not.
⚠️ Understand that attention to time can produce opposite effects depending on context: clock-watching in boredom slows time, but time pressure in deadline contexts speeds it up.
True or false: The study found that people over 55 consistently reported time passing faster than younger adults. (False. Age was not a significant predictor in the UK, and in Iraq younger age was associated with faster perceived time.)
Fill in the blank: The three consistent predictors of the belief that annual events come around more quickly were ______, ______, and ______. (Attention to time, event enjoyment, prospective memory errors.)
True or false: Retrospective memory errors were a stronger predictor than prospective memory errors. (False. Prospective memory errors were the significant predictor; retrospective memory errors were not.)
True or false: General quality of life (physical health, environmental health) was a strong predictor of time distortion for annual events. (False. Only social QoL in the UK was significant; the other domains were not.)
This material connects to the broader literature on prospective and retrospective memory (see Block and Zakay's dual-process models of timing). It also links to research on time perception during the COVID-19 pandemic, where similar factors (emotion, isolation, routine disruption) produced distortions to time. If your course covers cognitive load theory or attentional resource models, the mechanism by which absorption in tasks makes time fly is the same framework applied here to longer durations.
Time perception, passage of time judgement, POTJ, subjective time, time distortion, time flies, Christmas time perception, Ramadan time perception, prospective memory, retrospective memory, PRMQ, WHOQOL-BREF, quality of life, attentional focus, time pressure, cognitive load, memory storage model, contextual change model, cross-cultural psychology, annual events, temporal awareness, deadline effect, event-specific emotion, Ogden 2024, long-epoch time perception