Why is the return journey shorter than the outward journey?

If every time you go on vacation you have the feeling that the outward journey is always longer than the return journey, you're not alone.

There is a tendency for people to perceive the return as if it lasted a little less than the outward journey, even though objectively the distances traveled are exactly the same. This seems to be indicated, at least, by some investigations.

The “return trip effect”: shorter return trips

One of the studies on this topic was carried out in 2011 by a group of Dutch psychologists who started this project when they realized account that it happened to themselves and decided to study what could be called the "return trip effect" or "return trip effect".

The study, conducted by researchers at Tilburg University, carried out three experiments to check to what extent this phenomenon is widespread and under what conditions it occurs.

Research

In the first one, 69 people had to make a round trip by bus to, then rate on an 11-point scale how long each of these two had been made trips. Despite the fact that both journeys were equally long, when the outward journey took longer than expected, people tended to rate the return trip as shorter.

The second experiment was designed to reveal the effect it had on the perception of travel time the fact that people knew or not the route through which the journey of lap. To this end, several group outings on bicycles were scheduled. in which some people returned by where they had gone and another part of the group returned by a different route but of the same length. However, people in both groups tended to perceive the return trip as shorter.

In the third and final experiment, the participants did not have to move from where they were but rather watch a video on in which a person went to a friend's house and returned, taking exactly 7 minutes in each of these two trips. Once this was done, the 139 participants were divided into several groups and each of them was asked to estimate the time that had passed during the outbound or return trip.

The conclusions of the three studies

While the appreciation of the passage of time was in line with reality in those people in charge of estimating the duration of the return trip (they estimated an average duration of 7 minutes)., people who were asked about the outbound trip tended to add several minutes to the actual elapsed time (they gave an average of 9 and a half minutes). Also, curiously, this effect disappeared in those people who, before watching the video, were He had said that the trips took a long time, since they were more realistic in judging the duration of the trip. return.

Overall, summarizing the study findings, the researchers found that the people who participated in the experiments tended to perceive the return trip as 22% shorter.

A more recent case

In a more recent investigation whose results have been published in PLOS One, scientists from Kyoto University asked a series of participants to judge the duration of the trip to and from the return that they saw on a video recording. In one of the cases, the participants would see a round trip along the same path, and in the other case they would see a one-way trip. along the same path that was shown to the people of the first group, but the return would go through a completely distinct. However, the durations and distances of the three possible tours were exactly the same.

People who saw the round trip through the same route they had the feeling that the return was significantly shorter, while the participants in the group in which the return took place by a different route than the outbound one did not notice a difference in the duration.

How is this explained?

It is not known exactly what causes the return trip effect, but most likely it has to do with our way of assessing the passage of time in retrospect, that is, once the return trip has elapsed. The Dutch researchers in charge of carrying out the first experiments believe that this curious phenomenon has to do with the appreciation refusal of a too long first trip, which makes the return seem shorter by comparison as it is more in line with our expectations.

Another explanation would be that it is more likely that we worry more about the passage of time on the way, because this is associated with the idea of ​​arriving on time to a place, while the same does not usually happen when returning. In this way, the brain allocates more resources to concentrate over the course of the minutes and seconds to look for possible shortcuts and thus satisfy certain objectives.

Bibliographic references:

• Ozawa R, Fujii K, and Kouzaki M (2015). The Return Trip Is Felt Shorter Only Postdictively: A Psychophysiological Study of the Return Trip Effect. PLOS One, 10(6), e0127779
• Van de Ven, N., Van Rijswijk, L. and Roy, M. m. (2011). The return trip effect: Why the return trip often seems to take less time. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(5), pp. 827 - 832.