By for The Wall Street Journal
It feels like we just got here. How often have we all said that when a vacation is coming to an end? We blinked and it’s the last day. And then when we get home: It’s like we never left.
Time not only flies when you’re having fun – sometimes anticipating a fun event makes it feel like it will be over as soon as it begins, a new study suggests. Researchers found that people judge future positive events as being both farther away as well as shorter in duration than negative or neutral events. Combining those two elements has a strange effect when people look forward to a positive event like a vacation, said Selin Malkoc, co-author of the study and associate professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.
“The seemingly endless wait for the vacation to start combined with the feeling that the vacation will fly by leads people to feel like the beginning and the end of their time off as similarly far from the present,” Malkoc said. “In other words, in their mind’s eye, the vacation is over as soon as it begins. It has no duration.”
The study was published online recently in the Journal of Consumer Psychology …and on MSN and Daily Mail.
We talk with JCR editor Andrew Stephen about our recent research, a meta-analysis on the experiential advantage, and the journey to publication, including what we learned about publishing meta-analyses.
Can you shrink or expand time in a lab? In your daily life? This week’s #SpotlightSpeaker Selin Malkoc from @FisherOSU shares her research and experiences that help us understand how we perceive time. #OhioStateInnovates go.osu.edu/malkoc
Yes, there is a future in retail! Consumers will always need, and want, things and experiences. That hasn’t changed at all...https://www.creditdonkey.com
Selin Malkoc on The Lisa Show. “When we say the word “hobby”, we often think of leisure time 
devoted to casually doing something we love in our spare time. …but when it comes to time spent relaxing (and nothing else), how can we truly maximize our relaxation and not feel the need to be in a busy mindset? Joining us is Dr. Selin Malkoc, a behavioral scientist and marketing professor at The Ohio State University. She’s here to talk with us about how to really maximize our leisure time.”
…Ohio State University’s Chair of the Marketing and Logistics Department Joe Goodman says this is the way to win at retail. “The retailers that are providing an experience for their consumers are
the ones that are driving in traffic and getting consumers in the door. Once they can get you in the door, chances are, you’re probably going to buy something,” said Goodman. Goodman says the key is offering experiences that you can’t buy online….
‘“The authors use a creative analysis to isolate the effect they are after — which they do really well.” Malkoc, who wasn’t involved in the research, said the findings are consistent with her own research showing that “the mistakes that hurt the most are the ones that are most likely to increase effort later on.” But, her research shows, emotional reflection and perseverance are critical.
In one study, Malkoc and colleagues found that people who merely cogitate intellectually on a flub tend to focus on their egos and make excuses, while those who ponder the failure emotionally end up trying harder the next time. “If your thoughts are all about how to distance yourself from the failure, you’re not going to learn from your mistakes,” she says…’