We often feel that the journey home feels faster than the trip to the destination? It turns out that there is a scientific explanation of this phenomenon, you know.
Travel anywhere and with any interest, for example travel, business, returning to your hometown by plane, train or car. Even though the duration is the same, it feels shorter.
In the research, why the return trip is shorter because you are familiar with the different routes taken at departure. Research from Kyoto University by asking participants to watch video trips with two of the three travel routes. The first route from point A to point B, the second route starting from point B to point A, then on the third route from point C to point D.
The participants consulted the route map while watching the video. The result is that they are the only ones who feel that route B to A is noticeably shorter. Even though they need the same time.
This phenomenon is about our brain repeating the past, rather than experiencing a faster journey back from the original destination.
According to this study, when the trip departs our brains are busy with the surrounding conditions, focusing on the road that is being passed. Meanwhile, on the way home, our brains are familiar with the surrounding conditions. The effect is that the trip home is noticeably shorter.
However, there is another explanation regarding the effect of travel in the study results written in the journal Hippocampus in 2016. Researchers asked first-year students to make a sketch of the campus along with the estimated travel time at various points. The study said that the more students know the campus, the bigger the sketch, the shorter the estimated time.
Previous research published in the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review in 2011 contradicts the above research. A researcher from the Netherlands and the United States asked study participants to estimate trips using three real-world travel scenarios using buses and bicycles. Then asked to watch travel videos in a laboratory. They said that the return trip was noticeably quicker even though the route they took was different.
The conclusion of the case study says that when departing, exaggerated expectations about travel are refuted. As a result, the journey home feels shorter and more comfortable, because dramatic shadows are not experienced.
But research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology argues differently. The study argued why the departure time was longer than the return time. This is because we don't know what will happen on the way.
To find out that, the respondents in the study were taken to a laboratory to watch travel videos. Then the respondent looked for the letters on the puzzle and returned to the main room.
Half of the respondents were told their goals and what they would do. The other half were not told what they would do and what they could expect after leaving the room. Respondents who were not informed of the direction of their destination said the initial journey seemed longer than the return journey.
All the results of this study are about understanding of the surrounding conditions and excessive expectations. This is commensurate with the idea of time slower when we are thinking hard.
When the brain is focused, our brain's perception of time will also feel longer. This is often experienced by high school students whose brains try to focus on math in the classroom who feel like time doesn't stop and never goes.
Another study in New Zealand, found that this phenomenon occurs more often when we travel to new, unknown places. Because our brains try to focus more while to places we are more familiar with or are traveling through this phenomenon is less common.
In fact, when we go on the road, we often encounter many things that make us worry so that we keep checking our target time and create a psychological effect that the trip feels longer, while on the way home, the trip feels shorter because we are no longer burdened by time expectations us to arrive.
Wonderful !!