Leisure time can be a letdown

  • By Benedict Carey / Los Angeles Times
  • Monday, May 17, 2004 9:00pm
  • Life

As summer approaches, millions of people around the country are planning how best to spend their time off.

They’re doing so, experts say, at a time when work and family demands are escalating, squeezing the amount of vacation time that people take and intensifying their expectations of it.

Many see vacations as a chance not only to relax but also to learn about themselves, meditate on the direction of their lives and address personal problems, surveys show.

And as often as not, they return disappointed, feeling as much in need of time off as before.

The psychological needs of vacationers can go unsatisfied, whether during a bicycle trip through New England, tropical week on the beach or holiday break at Grandma’s. Researchers who study leisure have interviewed thousands of tourists of all ages, analyzed travel diaries and vacation memories, and joined tour groups to discover what sours a vacation.

Travel snafus aside, they say, frustrated tourists usually have no one to blame but themselves – either because of too-high expectations, because they’ve revised the memories of past vacations or because the vacations simply didn’t fit their needs.

“Socrates said it more than two thousand years ago, but it absolutely applies when you take time away: Know thyself,” said Andrew Yiannakis, a University of Connecticut sociologist who studies personality and vacation choices.

“As hard as people are working now, it’s crucial to think about what the time can provide and what it can’t.”

When taken regularly through a working life, time off can be good medicine, physically and emotionally.

People tend to sleep better after more than a week off, have fewer physical complaints than they did before the break, and report being more optimistic and energetic than they were before.

These effects may last five days or five weeks, and depend on how satisfying the break was, researchers say.

The need for a break seems greater than ever. A 2002 survey of 1,893 tourists found that 3 percent of them report feeling such responsibility to their jobs that they have headaches, fatigue and nausea when they’re away for more than a few days, a phenomenon the Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets calls “leisure sickness,” a combination of guilt about being away and dread of what crises are filling the “in” box.

Any experienced vacationer knows it can take a few days to shake this sickness and mentally take leave. But after that, psychologists say, most people not only expect relief and invigoration – they insist on it, regardless of how they actually feel during the vacation.

In a recent series of experiments, a team of investigators led by Northwestern University psychologist Leigh Thompson followed three groups of vacationers, interviewing them before, during and after their time off. The pattern was the same in all three: excited anticipation, followed by disappointment in many cases.

Weeks after the vacation, some still felt let down. But most members of each group found that their recollections were re-created as warm memory.

“We call it rosy retrospection, and it is particularly significant” after vacations, Thompson said. “People need to have good things happen, it’s such an important break, so they’re constantly reviving their view of events.

“It follows a general psychological principle: getting what you want by revising what you had.”

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