An illusion of time caused by repeated experience

How do people remember when something occurred? One obvious possibility is that, in the absence of explicit cues, people remember based on memory strength. If a memory is fuzzy, it likely occurred longer ago than a memory that is vivid. Here, we demonstrate a robust illusion of time that stands in stark contrast with this prediction. In six experiments, we show that experiences which are repeated (and, consequently, better remembered) are counterintuitively remembered as having initially occurred further away in time. This illusion is robust (amounting to as much as a 25% distortion in perceived time), consistent (exhibited by the vast majority of participants tested), and applicable at the scale of ordinary day-to-day experience (occurring even when participants were tested over one full week). We argue that this may be one of the key mechanisms underlying why it is that people’s sense of time often strongly deviates from reality.