Asked by: Chris Moore, Andover
Although we feel sluggish and tired when we’re bored, at a physiological level it’s actually a ‘high arousal’ state (as measured by a faster heart rate). In turn, it’s well-established that greater arousal speeds up our brain’s ‘internal clock’, so that we feel that more time has passed than actually has. Another theory is that the apparent slowing down of time is a kind of signal our brain sends to itself to convey that the current situation is unfulfilling and we should do something else.
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