{"id":34229,"date":"2026-07-31T18:29:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=34229"},"modified":"2026-07-30T13:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T17:38:07","slug":"u-of-t-scarborough-study-explains-why-extra-time-seems-to-slip-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2026\/07\/u-of-t-scarborough-study-explains-why-extra-time-seems-to-slip-away\/","title":{"rendered":"U of T Scarborough study explains why extra time seems to slip away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Has this ever happened to you? Your last meeting ended 15 minutes early, yet with all that extra time, you still showed up late for your next meeting? Or maybe your flight was delayed by an hour, yet you still nearly missed it.<\/p>\n

Sam Maglio<\/strong> and co-authors have an explanation in a new study about this psychological phenomenon \u2014 which is so strong that Maglio recently almost missed a delayed flight despite just helping write an entire paper about how that was probably going to happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you study how people use their time doesn\u2019t always mean you\u2019re good at it,\u201d says Maglio, a professor of marketing and psychology at U of T Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management.<\/p>\n

In a paper published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research<\/em><\/a>, Maglio and his co-authors found that when you gain time unexpectedly, that time feels subjectively longer than regular time. Across seven studies of both real and hypothetically gained free time, they found this mental time expansion changes how we behave: we\u2019ll often spend longer doing the same things and choose activities that take more time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see gained time as a blessing and a curse. If you feel chronically pressed for time, then gaining half an hour seems awesome. And maybe slowing down a bit is good for well-being. But when you take that not-so-pressed-for-time feeling and stretch it out too far, you can fall right back into time famine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effect comes down to the reference points our brains use. Judged against an expectation of nothing, anything feels like a lot.<\/p>\n

Maglio compares it to finding $20 in the pocket of a jacket you haven\u2019t worn in a while. Because your expectation jumped from zero to 20, rather than staying at 20, you\u2019ll feel like you just got $20 richer. Or, think of it like lighting a match in a pitch-black room versus lighting one in a room with all its lights on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever free time opens up \u2014 five minutes or five hours \u2014 is going to seem bigger than it is because of that expectancy-violation snap from \u2018I\u2019ve got nothing\u2019 to \u2018I have something,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The team found that this effect doesn\u2019t hinge on feelings \u2014 time will feel expanded whether you\u2019re relieved or disappointed that your plans were cancelled. They also found the effect compounds: the more unexpected time people gained, the stronger the effect became. And when participants were asked to compare ordinary free time to having no free time at all, the difference vanished; regular free time felt just as expanded as gained time.<\/p>\n

In one study, people were asked how long they\u2019d spend on a walk during their free time, and those who were told they got that time unexpectedly said they would walk about 10 per cent longer than those who expected the free time. In another, participants reported they\u2019d pick longer versions of the same activity if their time was unexpectedly gained, such as choosing a coffee shop that\u2019s farther away, or starting a 45-minute work task instead of a 30-minute one. The effect was the same whether they spent their new time on leisure or work.<\/p>\n

In a real-life study, students who unexpectedly gained 10 minutes at the end of a lab session took about 14 per cent longer to simply leave the building than those who knew the time would be free. They packed up more slowly and were more likely to browse a box of trinkets and snacks the researchers planted in the hallway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen time feels long, you kind of just luxuriate in it,\u201d says Maglio, whose research often focuses on time and well-being, including a previous study that found actively pursuing happiness can make us unhappy<\/a>, specifically because it makes us feel pressed for time.<\/p>\n

So is gained time a gift, or a trap? Maglio says it\u2019s both.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s totally a trap you could fall into,\u201d he says. “When we gain time, we see it differently, and the behaviour we default to might not be in our best interest. We run the risk of thinking we can do more in that time than we actually can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maglio\u2019s practical advice is to outsource the clock-watching entirely, especially when the stakes are high, like his delayed flight \u2014 enjoy the extra hour, but set an alarm.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bit of intentionality can go a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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JOURNAL<\/h4>\n

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Has this ever happened to you? Your last meeting ended 15 minutes early, yet with all that extra time, you still showed up late for your next meeting? Or maybe your flight was delayed by an hour, yet you still nearly missed it. Sam Maglio and co-authors have an explanation in a new study about… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"no","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,60],"tags":[42,683,684,686,685,682],"class_list":["post-34229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memory","category-neuroscience","category-perception","tag-brain","tag-free-time","tag-lateness","tag-lost-time","tag-pressure","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34232,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34229\/revisions\/34232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}