Science explains why the return journey seems shorter even when we take the same route

As Alan Bean returned to Earth from the mission that landed him on the moon, he thought of something you probably thought about when you went on vacation: the trip back seems shorter than the trip out. In fact, most of us feel it after a trip, and scientists seem to have found an answer to this interesting phenomenon.

We, from awesome.clubwe have always been very curious about this sensation and decided to share with you what we learned about it.

At first, scientists thought that the “return trip effect” was related to the feeling of familiarity with the path: since we have already passed the same path, we are more attentive to everything we see and are not so affected by the feeling of the passage of time. time until we get home. However, this idea ended up being discarded, as the same effect was noticed on different routes, or even on plane trips.

But what matters here is not measuring time, but understanding how time is perceived by our memory. During the trip, we didn’t feel any difference in relation to the passage of time, but when the trip ended and we got home we felt that one journey was shorter than the other.

Also, when we leave the house, we usually have a concrete schedule about the time we should arrive at our destination, usually because we have appointments scheduled. This forces us to pay more attention to time: we look at the clock more often and end up with a feeling that time is not passing.

When we go on vacation, we get excited and feel that the destination takes time to arrive. On the other hand, when we prepare to go back, we think that the journey will last the same time, but we forget that we are no longer the same; that is, we do not feel the same joy linked to the anticipation of the holidays. And it is precisely the feeling of expectation that makes us think that it takes longer to reach the destination than to return home.

To complete the studies, the scientists decided to test whether the feeling when watching a video is the same. They showed two videos of the same person riding a bicycle, one of them going and one of them coming back, both seven minutes long. The participant in the experiment had to observe whether he felt the “return trip effect”. The result showed that the same happens on video, that is, we feel that the cyclist came back faster than he went.

Have you ever had this feeling while traveling? And has this ever happened even taking another trip back? Share your experience in the comments.