This document outlines an experiment to test whether time flies when people are having fun. The experiment involves having volunteers spend two hours each in two rooms - one room containing food (the fun condition) and one room empty except for a chair (the non-fun condition). Volunteers will be asked to estimate how long they spent in each room, and their estimates will be compared to the actual time to see if time seems to pass more quickly when eating compared to sitting alone. The experiment aims to block participants by gender and keep conditions blind to obtain accurate results on the effect of fun on time perception.

1. Time Flies When You’re
BHy: Staephavniei MncLayg and JFennyu Kimn

2. Does time actually fly?
To test whether or not “time flies when you’re
having fun”, eating will serve as the “fun”
activity. A person’s belief about how long they
think they have spent in each room will be
compared to the actual time spent in each room

3. Sample
The sample will
consists of
volunteers. There
will be a total of 40
people, 20 males
and 20 females.

4. Explanatory Variable
The explanatory variable is fun, which in this
experiment is stimulated by food.

5. Treatment
Treatment 1: one room with a buffet (including
dessert, drinks and entree meals of food), a
table and chair, with no clock and electronics.
Treatment 2: same room with absolutely
nothing other than a chair and table.

6. Response Variable
The response variable is the amount of time
that the volunteer believes has passed.

7. Steps of Design
1. Find 40 volunteers, 20 men and 20 women, who have not
eaten in the past 3 hours
2. Randomly assign which room each volunteer goes into first;
one person will be in a room at a time.
3. The volunteer will spend two hours in each room (evaluator
will start the time when they enter the room)
a. in the room with the buffet (“fun”), they are allowed to
eat as much as they want
b. in the room with no buffet, they must only sit in the chair
and do nothing else.

8. Steps of Design
4. At the end of the time in each room, ask each volunteer how
long they think they have been in each room
5. After spending time in both rooms, ask each volunteer the
total time of how long they think they have spent in the
rooms
6. Calculate the average time that each volunteer thinks they
have been in the room
7. Compare this average to the actual time that they were in the
room

9. Outline of Experiment

10. Blocking
We will block by gender. This will help
eliminate any confounding variables caused by
gender (whether one gender is better at
estimating time than the other) and show
whether there is a difference between the
estimating skill of males versus females on
whether time has “flew” by.

11. Possible Confounding
Variables
When constructing an experiment, one must remove all
variables that could affect the outcome of the experiment.
Some possible confounding variables could be volunteers
who enjoy sitting alone in a room or volunteers who dislike
eating a lot of delicious food. This will skew the results of
the experiment.

12. Blinding
There will be blinding in this experiment; none
of the volunteers will know how long they
spend in each room and will have to estimate
how much time they think have passed.

13. Hypothesis
We believe that people will guess under the
actual time if they are having fun and they will
guess over or the same time if they are not
having fun or if they are bored.