ASSOCIATION AS A CAUSE OF DATING BIAS

Two experiments investigated a dating bias in which people tend to est imate recent dates too remotely and remote dates too recently. Experim ent 1 examined and upheld a prediction of the hypothesis that bias ari ses because events whose time of occurrence is unknown are dated throu gh associated events for which some time information is available. Exp eriment 2 required some subjects to date prototype events while others dated specific events. Prototype events were dated more recently, and the errors in dating specific events were related to differences in t he way the prototype events were dated. Both sets of results were pred icted by the association hypothesis, according to which events whose d ates are well known are dated with reference either to specific associ ated events or to prototype events.