Lost in pandemic time: a phenomenological analysis of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis

Abstract

People have experienced many forms of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis. For this study, we collected a rich corpus of reports on the multifaceted experiences of disorientation during the pandemic. In this paper, we study the resulting corpus using a descriptive approach. We identify six emerging themes: temporal rift; temporal vertigo; impoverished time; tunnel vision; spatial and social scaffolding of time; suspended time. We offer a phenomenological analysis of each of the themes. Based on the phenomenological analysis, we draw a key distinction between episodic and existential forms of temporal disorientation, and we argue that the Covid-19 crisis is best conceptualised as a period of suspended time.

Experiencing a slow passage of time was an indicator of social and temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…One of the key questions that we wanted to address in our study concerned temporal vertigo —the sense of time both accelerating and decelerating or both contracting and dilating—which had been previously reported to be one of the features of the phenomenology of the pandemic 5 , 13 , 23 , 25 . To better understand temporal vertigo, we analysed the responses of those participants reporting both instances of slow and of fast PoT (group 3).…”

“…This means that across all aspects of the experience of the pandemic, whether time passed quickly or slowly was one of the most divisive phenomenological features, along with whether elapsed time felt shorter or longer. Moreover, a previous analysis of qualitative reports gathered during lockdowns and curfews in France and in the UK 23 found that a substantial number of people reported that time passed both quickly and slowly at once depending on the perspective and temporal scale they had in mind, a confusion-inducing phenomenon which is conducive to temporal vertigo 5 , 13 , 24 . Such puzzling reports were widely documented during the pandemic 25 and are investigated both for passage of time and temporal distance judgements 13 .…”

Out of time, out of mind: Multifaceted time perceptions and mental wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Especially as recall period lengthens, individuals become more likely to experience conflicting time disorientations (e.g. slowness as well as quickness), consistent with a sense of vertigo (Velasco et al, 2022a(Velasco et al, , 2022b. In France, perceived slowness in particular is linked to a psychological sense of traumatization (Velasco et al 2022a).…”

“…While researchers of time perceptions have long noted that public health emergencies and other social upheavals alter how we experience the passage and availability of time (Restubog et al, 2020;Roeser, 2012;Taylor, 2020;Zimbardo and Boyd, 2008), the COVID-19 pandemic represents a vital opportunity to revisit a fundamental, longstanding question in the literature: how common are different time perceptions, and how are these different time perceptions related to each other? In particular, while the perceptions of time moving slowly or quickly are commonly studied, it is less common to place these into the context of feeling rushed or that days blend together, which are other important components of temporal disorientation (Chaumon et al, 2022;Kosak et al, 2022;Velasco et al, 2022aVelasco et al, , 2022b). Here, we analyze these time perceptions not only in terms of their frequency, but also in terms of how they relate to each other and vary across individual backgrounds and experiences of pandemic-related stress.…”

“…While time perceptions vary with social circumstances, hours of the day induce constraints on activity regardless. Given the typical occurrence of work hours during the daytime, many researchers have operated on the premise that allocation of time across work and nonwork commitments such as family is zero-sum (Strazdins et al, 2011; Williams et al, 2016). By extension, number of hours spent at work—especially abnormally long hours—can itself be considered a measure of time scarcity or time poverty when it comes to remaining time left for nonwork commitments over the span of a day.…”