Why do some things “seem like they just happened yesterday?”
Telescoping Effect
, explained.What is Telescoping Effect?
The telescoping effect refers to inaccurate perceptions regarding time, where people see recent events as more remote than they are (backward telescoping), and remote events as more recent (forward telescoping). This mental error in memory can occur whenever we make temporal assumptions regarding past events.
Where it occurs
It seems every year, on September 11, people remark how 9/11 seems like it wasn’t that long ago, and are surprised to hear the media highlight the number of years that have actually passed since the tragedy. Conversely, a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic and one might feel a lot more time has passed than it has. Instances of forward telescoping however, such as the case with 9/11, are more common than backward telescoping.1
These misjudgments in time stem from our tendency to assess remembered events by how long ago it feels they occurred rather than a deliberate calculation. Although it’s easier to spot these memory mix-ups in other people, they’re not always easy to detect in ourselves.
