Science Explains Exactly Why It Feels So Good When Someone Cancels Plans Last Minute
DukiPh | ShutterstockThere’s nothing quite like the feeling of finding out that plans you had were canceled at the last minute. A study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research concluded that there’s an interesting reason we feel practically giddy when this happens.
It may seem counterintuitive to feel so happy when plans are canceled at the last minute because we all live such busy lives, and this can be a pretty big inconvenience. But, we still breathe a sigh of relief when we get news that that meeting or get-together isn’t going to happen anymore, and it all has to do with how we perceive the time we have.
People love last-minute canceled plans because the ‘gained time’ feels longer than regular old free time.
Gained time is defined as “free time that arrives unexpectedly,” according to StudyFinds, which analyzed the research. This gained time actually feels longer than free time that we already knew we would have, even if it takes up the same amount of time.
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Researchers performed several experiments to prove this. In one, a group of college students was placed in a lab for a lecture and told it would end 10 minutes early. Meanwhile, another group of students was told that their session would last for half an hour, but were let out after just 20 minutes.
They both had the exact same amount of time left over, but the group that wasn’t expecting to have any free time moved at a more relaxed pace as they moved onto whatever was next for them because it felt like they had more time when they didn’t.
This feeling is caused by a phenomenon known as a ‘contrast effect.’
The American Psychological Association defined a contrast effect as “the perception of an intensified or heightened difference between two stimuli or sensations when they are juxtaposed or when one immediately follows the other.”
This basically just means that you form a judgment about something based on what you’re comparing it to. So, in the case of gained time, it’s compared to having no free time at all, which is what was expected before the plans were canceled. Because you thought you would have no free time at all, it feels even longer than the free time that already existed.
It’s interesting to note that this feeling did not change based on whether someone actually wanted the plans to be canceled or not. Finding out a dentist appointment was canceled is probably going to conjure better feelings than a girls night, but the perception of the time did not change based on whether subjects felt disappointment.
This is all intriguing, but it can’t really be used in a practical way.
Former clinical psychology professor Michael Wiederman, PhD, explained that time is a strange thing because we all want to “get more” of it. But, technically, everyone has 24 hours in a day, even though they spend those hours doing different things. Really, you were going to live life from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., whether you spent it in a meeting or whether you got to do something more enjoyable because the meeting was canceled.
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This presents a challenge for how this research can be applied to life. The experiment with the college students showed that they didn’t just feel like they had more time, but they also acted like it. Plans that are canceled at the last minute may be a good thing in this sense, because it could push us all to move a bit slower when we’re used to a breakneck pace.
Of course, it wouldn’t really be feasible to plan something for every minute of the day and then have all of the plans canceled last minute to achieve this effect.
Instead, this will remain a nice thing that happens from time to time. To actually optimize the time you do have, it’s better to do what Wiederman suggested and “manage our own behavior to effectively meet our needs.”
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
