Counting Down Makes Time Pass More Quickly

August 06, 2013 HBR's The Daily Stat When research participants were asked to give a hand-exercise ball 25 squeezes, the time required for the task felt 20% shorter to those who counted down from 25 to 1 than to those who counted from 1 to 25, say Edith Shalev of Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Vicki G. Morwitz of New York University. In a related experiment, people who squeezed a hand grip while counting down, rather than up, had a more favorable attitude about the product and expressed a greater willingness to buy it. Counting down may seem more exciting than counting upward, and the distraction may decrease time judgments, the researchers say. SOURCE: Does time fly when you're counting down? The effect of counting direction on subjective time judgment