The Effect of Waiting Environment and Perceived Atmosphere on Temporal Experience

Previously, it was shown that the environment of a waiting room can influence the perception of waiting time. The goal of the current study was to examine how waiting environment influ-ences temporal experience, and to explore which dimensions of room atmosphere predict the perception of waiting time. Twenty-four participants spent 90 minutes in an ordinary doctor???s waiting room, and on a different day, another 90 minutes in a sacral room of a distinctly con-templative character. As dependent variables, we assessed various aspects of temporal experi-ence, including passage of-time judgments, time awareness judgments, and duration judg-ments for the waiting time. As independent variables, we assessed the perceived atmosphere of the waiting environment along different dimensional scales, including detachment, cozi-ness, liveliness, tenseness, and valence. The results suggest that perceived valence, detach-ment, and tenseness of a room predict passage of-time judgments and time awareness judg-ments. However, more research is needed to confirm these results. Furthermore, the results were likely biased towards an increased time awareness due to the within-subjects design of the study. Nevertheless, a possible explanation could be that especially unpleasant and de-tached rooms draw one???s attention towards time, whereas more pleasant and less detached rooms allow attention to be deployed on the nontemporal aspects of the situation.