Gender Effects on the Perception of Time

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to determine how much of an effect, if any, gender has on the perception of time. Methods/Materials A random sampling of 50 high school students was taken, equally divided between males and females, and they were asked individually to do two different types of time estimates. The first type of time estimation task consisted of three separate tests in which each person was asked to guess when they thought 10, 30, then 45 seconds had passed. For the second type of estimation, each person was asked to count out 60 seconds three different times. For all the tests a stopwatch was used and the exact times for each subject's response for each test was recorded and the data was later analyzed. Subjects were tested in the same location and environment. Results For the "guessing" task, males were closer to the true time than females for all three intervals, although they were not very accurate. The outcome for the second task, the 60 second counting estimate, was that males were on average about 4.5 seconds short of a minute, while females were about 14 seconds short. When a statistical analysis of the data was done, there was a significant difference between males and females. Conclusions/Discussion It appeared that males were more accurate at both guessing when an amount of time had passed and counting out a minute, whereas females generally believed that time had passed much faster than it actually had. It appeared that time seems to go by slower for males than it does for females. It also appeared that accuracy increases as the time interval lengthens. Gender did have an effect in this study.

Competition history

• CSEF 2009 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry S0303

Resources

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