Distortions to the passage of time during England’s second national lockdown: A role for depression

Ruth Ogden

PLOS ONE, 2021, vol. 16, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: In attempts to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus, many governments have resorted to imposing national lockdowns on their citizens. Previous research has demonstrated the passage of time becomes distorted for many people during these lockdowns. To date, research has only examined how time was experienced early in initial lockdowns. The current study examined whether distortions to the passage of time were also present later into the global pandemic. An online questionnaire was used to collect passage of time judgments for the day, week and 8 month period since the first UK lockdown. In addition, measures of affect, social satisfaction, task-load, compliance and health status were also recorded. The results show that over 80% of people reported experiencing distortion to the passage of time during the second English lockdown in comparison with normal. Depression, satisfaction with social interaction and shielding status were found to be significant predictors of temporal distortion. A slower passage of time was associated with greater depression, shielding and greater dissatisfaction with social interactions. Feeling like it was longer than 8 months since the UK’s first lockdown was associated with greater depression, increased dissatisfaction with social interaction and greater change of life as a result of lockdown. The results suggest that distortions to the passage of time are an enduring feature of lockdown life and that different factors predict temporal experience during different points in lockdown.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250412 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 50412&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0250412

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250412

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().