Retrospective bias during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Humans tend to distort past events, leading to a gap between experience and retrospective experience—the retrospective bias. This study clarified the characteristics of retrospective bias in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Longitudinal data from 597 Japanese individuals were gathered during the COVID-19 pandemic from January 2020 to January 2021. Analysis revealed that cognition regarding COVID-19 one year ago was retrospectively underestimated. In addition, within-person variation among the responses of the 11 waves consistently showed a negative association with bias. These findings suggest that retrospective methods of describing long-lasting and fluctuating events will lead to inaccurate conclusions.