Why is the return trip shorter than the outward trip?

We have all experienced this strange effect. Why does it happen?

If every time you go on vacation you have the feeling that the outbound trip is always longer than the the outbound trip is always longer than the return trip, you are not alone.you are not alone.

There is a tendency for people to perceive the return trip as taking slightly less time than the outward journey, even though objectively the distances covered are exactly the same. At least some research seems to indicate this.

The "return trip effect": shorter return trips

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

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Tilburg, conducted three experiments to test how widespread this phenomenon is and under what conditions it occurs. and under what conditions it occurs.

Research

In the first of these, 69 people were asked to make an outward and a return trip by bus and then to rate on an 11-point scale how long each of these two trips was. Although both trips were equally long, when the outward trip took longer than expected, people tended to rate the return trip as being shorter.

The second experiment was designed to reveal the effect on perceived travel time of whether or not people knew the route along which the return trip passed. For this purpose, several group outings by bicycle were scheduled, with some people returning the way they had gone and another part of the group returning by a different route of equal length. However, people in both groups tended to perceive the return trip as shorter.

In the third and final experiment, participants did not have to move from where they were but watched a video in which a person went to a friend's house and back, taking exactly 7 minutes for 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 spent during either the outward or the return trip.

The conclusions of the three studies

While the time estimates were in line with reality for those asked to estimate the duration of the return trip (they estimated an average duration of 7 minutes), those asked to estimate the duration of the return trip (they estimated an average duration of 7 minutes)people who were asked about the outward journey tended to add several minutes to the actual time elapsed (they gave an average of 9.5 minutes). Also, interestingly, this effect disappeared in those people who had been told before watching the video that the trips took a long time, as they were more realistic in judging the length of the return trip.

Overall, summarizing the findings of the study, 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 more recent research whose results have been published in PLOS One, scientists at Kyoto University asked a series of participants to judge the length of the outward and return trip they saw in a video recording. In one case, participants would see a round trip along the same path, and in the other case they would see an outward trip along the same path shown to people in the first group but the return trip would be along a completely different route. However, the durations and distances of the three possible routes were exactly the same..

People who saw the outward and return trip via the same route felt that the return trip was significantly shorter. felt that the return trip was significantly shorter, while participants in the group where the return trip was via the same route felt that the return trip was significantly shorter.Participants in the group in which the return trip was via a different route than the outward trip did not notice any difference in duration.

How can this be explained?

It is not known exactly why the return trip effectbut it most likely has to do with the way we evaluate the passage of time in retrospect, i.e. after the return trip has already taken place. The Dutch researchers in charge of the first experiments believe that this curious phenomenon has to do with the negative appreciation of a first trip that was too long, which makes the return trip seem shorter by comparison because it is more in line with our expectations.

Another explanation would be that we are more likely to be concerned about the passage of time on the way there, because it is associated with the idea of arriving at a place on time, whereas this is not usually the case on the way back.because it is associated with the idea of arriving at a place on time, while the same is not usually true on the way back. Thus, the brain allocates more resources to concentrate on the passage of minutes and seconds to look for possible shortcuts and thus satisfy certain objectives.

Bibliographical 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., & 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.