Stand before two whiskey bottles. One reads “10 years old.” The other reads “distilled in 2015.” They share the same age. Your mind recognizes this. Yet one may appear older, more esteemed, worth slightly more.
Recent findings from UBC’s Sauder School of Business indicate this isn’t just your perception. The manner in which we depict time, whether as a duration or a calendar year, significantly alters our sense of its length. This perception influences actual monetary value. Whiskey bottles identified by age command approximately 9% more at auction than bottles identified by year. Identical duration. Divergent price points.
Dr. Deepak Sirwani and his research team refer to this phenomenon as the “year-length effect.” They merged auction information with seven experiments to validate what marketers have likely sensed for years: “10 years” inherently seems longer than “2015 to 2025.” The discrepancy remains consistent across various situations, and it shifts based on whether age benefits or detracts from the item’s value.
The Mental Number Line Is Distorted
The reason lies in how our minds perceive numbers. We don’t visualize them on a flat scale. The mental number line operates logarithmically, compressed at the higher end. The leap from 1 to 2 feels significant. The leap from 2024 to 2025 feels minimal.
“Our mental number line is logarithmic, meaning the perceived difference between numbers decreases as they increase. The gap between 11 and 12 feels smaller than that between 2 and 3,” explains Sirwani.
When time is articulated as a span, such as 10 years, your mind fixates on that smaller number. It occupies the less-compressed section of your cognitive scale, making the interval appear meaningful. When the same duration is articulated as 2015 to 2025, those larger figures condense together. The gap seems reduced.
This creates a time distortion with economic implications. Sellers listing secondhand items on Craigslist earned approximately 17% more when they referenced the year of purchase rather than the item’s age. Calendar years made sofas and electronics seem newer, less used. For whiskey, tradition, and any context where age denotes quality, you prefer the opposite. Speak in years. Allow time to expand.
Beyond Consumerism
The impact extends beyond consumer products. Sirwani’s team suggests its relevance to retirement planning, medical choices, and climate timelines. A policy goal set for “2046” might feel far-off and vague. Frame it as “20 years from now” and a sense of urgency emerges. The duration remains unchanged, but the articulation alters our perception of it.
There’s no single best method to describe time. The choice relies on your communication objective. If you want people to comprehend how much time has elapsed or how distant something is, utilize the span. If your intent is to condense time, making it seem manageable or recent, employ the dates.
Grasping this won’t halt time’s passage. But it might influence our outlook on the future and the value we assign to the past.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437251399115
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