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Many of my friends and I have noticed that at certain stages of fever, time is often perceived as being longer than usual. I'd like to know if this is caused by the disease itself, an immune reaction, or high body temperature.

Fun fact: a lot of gamers I know have told me that their performance in first person shooter games increases while they have fever. I also noticed that works for me and as far as a ill person's judgment goes, I think that fever disrupts prolonged concentration on a single task, which makes it easier to interchange current objectives (like from "going there" to "defending from that guy out of nowhere" almost instantly). I'd like to know if it's true and if it is related to fever at all.

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  • $\begingroup$ see also related question on general temperature - time perception relationship $\endgroup$
    – Jeromy Anglim
    Commented Oct 10, 2012 at 22:52
  • $\begingroup$ Could it be as simple as the fact that the rates of the body's chemical processes are directly related to the temperature? Thinking and perception rely on chemical reactions. $\endgroup$
    – Ray Butterworth
    Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 14:53

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Experiments reported in the article "Feeling the heat: body temperature and the rate of subjective time, revisited." (Weardon and Penton-Voak, 1995) observed that in many cases the rate of subjective time increased with increased body temperature. They suggest that a possible mechanism being that body temperature change also results in a change in arousal state.

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