Running head: EFFECTS OF EMOTION ON TIME AND NUMBER 1 In Press in Psychological Science Fewer Things, Lasting Longer: The Effects of Emotion on Quantity Judgments

What happens to our perception of time and number under the influence of emotion? Using temporal and numeric bisection tasks, we examined the effects of emotional stimuli (images of angry and happy faces, with neutral face controls) on time and number perception within the same subjects. Each participant also completed baseline temporal and numeric bisection tasks without emotional stimuli. Data showed that emotion altered time and number perception in opposing ways. As in prior studies, durations were overestimated following angry faces relative to neutral, consistent with arousal-modulated time perception theories. In contrast, numerosities were underestimated following both angry and happy faces relative to neutral. In addition, processing of time and number were found to be uncorrelated within subjects. Entirely opposite shifts (overestimation of time and underestimation of number) following emotional stimuli suggest separate cognitive systems for time and number that are differentially influenced by emotion.