The effect of the telescope is a concept in cognitive psychology , meaning the temporary displacement of an event in which people perceive events that have occurred recently more distant, and events that happened long ago, closer. Initially, this effect was known as the “reverse telescope” (events that are new for a certain period of time) and later - the “direct telescope” (events that are old for a certain period of time). [1] There is a point between the “reverse” and “direct” telescopes where events can be displaced both forward and backward in time.
The effect of the telescope comes from the idea that distant things seem closer than they really are. This can be compared to observing distant objects through a telescope. The telescope effect is representative of a wide class of cognitive phenomena.
Content
- 1 Explanation of the concept
- 2 Experiments
- 3 Reducing the effect of the telescope
- 4 The effect of the telescope in marketing
- 5 Research in other areas
- 6 notes
- 7 Literature
- 8 References
Explanation of the concept
The appearance of the telescope effect can be explained by the fact that with increasing age, the rate of forgetting recent events increases compared with long-standing ones. The temporal resolution of the perception of very recent or, conversely, long-standing phenomena is becoming commensurate. For example, for a person of 65 years of age, this perception is approximately the same for cases of 5 years and 50 years ago.
Experiments
An experiment was conducted in which participants recorded personal events in a diary every day for several months. [2] . After the diary was completely filled, the subjects were asked to evaluate how well they remember certain events. Their memories were compared with the present date and details in order to understand whether the “telescope effect” had occurred or not. [3]
In another experiment, the participants were housewives who became victims of crime. Housewives were interviewed by phone regarding the level of victimization: theft, property theft, hacking. The sociologist asked questions about whether the victims reported to the police and where, what type of crimes their case related to and when it happened. The results were unexpected and explained what happens during the memories. Using the effect of summation, sociologists collected information about the time of the last event using important dates. It was concluded that in this way the effect of the telescope can be suppressed, but it can work in different ways, since everything will depend on the crime.
Telescope Reduction
Noether and Woxburg developed a procedure called fusion memory to try to reduce the effect of the telescope. In preliminary interviews, people were asked questions about the events and in interviews conducted later, they were reminded of these events and asked about additional cases. The only drawback of this process is the requirement for the correct information in the initial interviews.
The time frame of a person is associated with the number of telescopic errors that they make. While the time frame of a person becomes more thoughtful, a person has more reference points with which you can determine events and not make mistakes caused by the telescope effect.
Telescope Effect in Marketing
Marketing firms quite often use surveys to understand when customers will continue to purchase goods. The effect of the telescope can affect ratings and lead to marketing campaign failures. The answers to marketing surveys are for the most part inaccurate when a reference is made to the time of the last consumer purchase. The “direct telescope” is triggered here. The “reverse telescope” leads respondents to overestimate their intention to buy a replacement product, as they underestimate the likelihood that the product will be damaged. The effect of the telescope has a great influence on market research, and therefore it has a place to be in marketing strategies. [four]
Research in other areas
The telescope effect is used in the study of alcohol dependence in men and women. This effect describes the case when women experience similar difficulties with alcoholism as men do, despite a general decrease in alcohol consumption. These results were obtained using computed tomography, on the basis of which women developed alcoholism and other brain pathologies after short periods of frequent alcohol consumption compared to men.
In other studies, the “telescope effect” appears during disordered gambling among women. That is, the time between the start of a passion for gambling and the development of problems associated with them is shorter for women than for men. However, the results of another study showed that gambling started at an early age, the time devoted to weekly participation in gambling was faster and the urge to gambling from the very beginning could be seen in men than in women. The only exception was when they measured at what moment the first signs of gambling addiction began to appear, but there was no gender difference. These results show us that the problem of gambling enthusiasm laid the foundation for the conclusion that there is no longer a difference in the rate of disease progression between men and women. It turns out that in general, there is no evidence that the “telescope effect” affects the gambling passion in women compared to men [5] .
Notes
- ↑ nlpnotes.com
- ↑ Morwitz, Vicki G. (1997). "It Seems Like Only Yesterday: The Nature and Consequences of Telescoping Errors in Marketing Research." Journal of Consumer Psychology. 6: 1-29.
- ↑ Thompson, Charles P .; Skowronski, John J .; Larsen, Steen F .; Betz, Andrew L. (1996). Autobiographical memory: remembering what and remembering when. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 131-134
- ↑ Morwitz, Vicki G. (1997). "It Seems Like Only Yesterday: The Nature and Consequences of Telescoping Errors in Marketing Research." Journal of Consumer Psychology. 6: 1-29.
- ↑ Telescoping and gender differences in the time course of disordered gambling: Evidence from a general population sample | GREO unopened (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment December 5, 2016. Archived January 13, 2017.
Literature
- Friedman WJ Memory for the time of past events // Psychol. Bull. 1993. V. 113. P. 44-66.
- Jabine, Thomas B., Miron L. Straf, Judith M. Tanur, and Roger Tourangeau. (1984). Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology: Building a Bridge Between Disciplines. Washington DC: National Academy Press. P. 32
- Michael J. Aminoff, François Boller, Dick F. Swaab. (2014) Handbook of clinical neurology. Volume 125.P. 247.
- Maria Giuseppina Muratore. Methodological problems of a victimization survey: an overview of a continuous working progress in Italy.
- National Research Council (1984). Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology: Building A Bridge Between Disciplines. Washington, DC. pp. 119-125.