Since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, has anyone beaten you up? Improving the accuracy of retrospective reports with landmark events

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Since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, has anyone beaten you up? Improving the accuracy of retrospective reports with landmark events

Memory & Cognition 1983, Vol. 11 (2),114-120

ELIZABETH F. LOFTUS and WESLEY MARBURGER

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195

When people are questioned about past experiences, it is common for events to be reported as happening more recently than they actually did. One technique for reducing the instances of this "forward telescoping" is tested in the current research: It involves the provision of land· mark events that can clearly mark the beginning of the reference period. Such a technique was shown to reduce the telescoping problem in five experiments, involving 1,694 subjects. The landmark event used in two of the studies was the first major eruption of Mt. St. Helens, and use of this event was shown to significantly reduce the incidence of forward telescoping of crime victimizations. Asking subjects to provide their own personal landmarks had similar beneficial effects. Finally, a more usual public landmark event, New Year's day, substantially reduced forward telescoping. At least part, but not all, of the benefit of landmark events appears to be due to their being dated rather precisely.