Dreading the clocks going back? Britons urged to join research

Does the prospect of darker evenings make you feel gloomy, or will you relish the extra hour in bed for one morning? Scientists are launching a study to better understand how the annual switch back to winter time affects people's wellbeing and time perception - and they need your help.

- Linda Geddes

In the UK, the clocks are due to go back at 2am on Sunday 27 October. Previous studies have largely focused on the negative effects of the spring transition to daylight saving time (DST) on people's sleep, cognitive performance and propensity to accidents, but less is known about the impact of the autumn change - or how these biannual events affect our perception of the passage of time.

“I'm interested in trying to understand how it feels when your day-to-day sense of time is disrupted by an external force: do you feel like you've got more or less time, and higher or lower levels of wellbeing?” said Prof Ruth Ogden at Liverpool John Moores University, who is leading the study. “Time is a hugely overlooked element of psychology. Our lives are structured by a clock and we all have an internal representation of time, yet we have really poor understanding of how people perceive time and whether we could potentially modify people's experiences of time to create improvements in wellbeing.”