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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 1, 2026

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat

Published on: September 12, 2014

Anxiety makes time pass quicker while fear has no effect.

Ioannis Sarigiannidis¹, Christian Grillon², Monique Ernst²

¹Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, University College London, London, WC1N 3AR, UK.

|December 30, 2019

Summary

Anxiety, not fear, causes people to underestimate time during unpleasant events. This finding may help explain differences in conditions like generalized anxiety disorder versus post-traumatic stress disorder.

Keywords:

Anxiety Emotion Fear Threat-of-shock Time perception

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Subjective time perception is often distorted during distressing events.
Fear and anxiety are distinct emotional responses to aversive stimuli.
Previous research suggests fear may lead to time overestimation, but the effect of anxiety is less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the differential effects of fear and anxiety on time perception.
To test the hypothesis that anxiety leads to time underestimation, contrasting with potential fear-induced overestimation.

Main Methods:

Utilized a threat-of-shock paradigm to induce anxiety in participants.
Employed a temporal cognition task where participants judged stimulus duration (long vs. short).
Conducted three experiments varying stimulus timings and shock levels, and two studies attempting to replicate fear-related findings.

Main Results:

Experimentally induced anxiety significantly led to the underestimation of temporal intervals.
A rightward shift in the psychophysical function indicated this underestimation (d = 0.68).
Failed to replicate previous findings of fear-induced time overestimation, suggesting a dissociation.

Conclusions:

Anxiety, distinct from fear, causes a subjective underestimation of time.
These findings offer a potential neurocognitive basis for differentiating subjective experiences in anxiety and fear-related disorders.
Highlights the importance of distinguishing between fear and anxiety in understanding emotional impacts on temporal cognition.