Negative Emotion (dys)regulation Predicts Distorted Time Perception: Preliminary Experimental Evidence and Implications for Psychopathology

Objective: Accurate time perception is crucial to daily life but vulnerable to interference, particularly through negative affect, which dilates individuals' sense of time passing. Regulation strategies like rumination, and disorders like borderline personality disorder (BPD), are linked to time distortion, yet their interrelationships remain untested. We investigated whether rumination and BPD symptoms increase time dilation in negative affective states to understand the clinical implications of time distortion.

Methods: In an online pilot study, we tested whether negative affect (NA) predicts subjective time perception and explored how rumination, BPD symptoms, and their interaction predicted time perception using a between-subjects online experimental mood induction. Adult participants (N_combined = 760) were recruited from Prolific Academic and a large, Midwestern U.S. university.

Results: State NA and increased BPD features predicted increased time dilation. The role of trait-level rumination was nuanced, with individuals low in BPD symptoms and elevated trait rumination exhibiting reduced time dilation in response to NA. Conversely, those with elevated rumination and BPD symptoms reported increased time dilation in the neutral condition.

Conclusion: Findings offer foundational evidence of NA and rumination's roles in time dilation for individuals across levels of BPD symptom endorsement. Subsequent replication and extension could flesh out these relationships and inform psychotherapeutic treatment targets.