The Return trip effect (effect of the return journey) is a common psychological phenomenon that occurs when we have the feeling that the journey returning from a destination less than the first leg, despite the distance traveled and the actual time used are identical. To date, i neurobiological correlated of this effect have not yet been clarified, but several studies suggest that some mechanisms related to ours play a key role tendency to anticipate the future and ours temporal expectations. These factors seem able to deceive our mindaltering the perception of time And making us believe that a part of the trip was longer – or shorter – than it really has been.
The role of expectations in the Return trip Effect
According to some studies, the Return trip effect It occurs more often when the first leg precedes a event that generates strong expectations. We think, for example, about excitement before a concert, the curiosity that accompanies us towards a new tourist destination or nervousness before an important exam.
In all these situations, during the ridewhile we head in the car or feet, we are not simply going from a point to to a point B. At the same time, our mind begins to project yourself into the futuretrying to move up What is about to happen. So, often we ask ourselves: “How will the concert be? Will I be able to pass the exam? The restaurant will really be as good as they say?”.
These expectations are often accompanied by intense emotions – such as anxiety, curiosity, excitement – and from physiological reactions Precisely: the heart accelerates, the pupils dilate, increase sweating and is released adrenaline. These mental and emotional states, as demonstrated by numerous studies, can alter our perception of timebringing us to overestimate the duration of what we are experiencing. So, it will seem to us that the Trips hard longer of how much it is not actually. On the contrary, during the return journeythe event has now passed. Emotions fade, physiological activation decreases and the mind is less committed to anticipating something.
Consequently, if the outward journey it is accompanied by greater anticipation compared to returnwe will tend to perceive it as longer. And it is precisely here that the Return Trip Effect is manifested: the feeling that the return hard less than the first legeven if you travel exactly same journey.
The return from a trip might seem faster for a “calculation error”
According to an alternative vision, the Return trip effect would depend on a “calculation error “ of our brain. In fact, some studies have shown that, even before traveling, our brain tries to calculate unconsciously there duration of the journeysystematically making the mistake of underestimate the time necessary.
This means that, while we are in the car or walk towards a destination, our mind has already formulated antemporal expectation on what the journey will last, which however will be inferior compared to the duration necessary to travel the journey. The result is that in the first leg, that is, when the perception of time is influenced by the estimates of our mind, real time will seem to us longer than expectedsimply because overcomes our expectations. During the return journeyon the other hand, the brain is based onexperience just lived. And since the first leg seemed long, we will tend to overestimate The duration of the return! But even in this case our predictions will be wrong: along the same way in a time shorter Compared to the estimate made, we will have the feeling that the return flew.
This mechanism also explains why the Return trip effect is less common in family courseslike the one from home to work. In these cases, thanks to the repetitionthe brain learns to do increasingly accurate estimatesminimizing the discrepancy between EXPECTED TIME AND PERCEPTED TIME.
