Affect and Memory in Retrospective Reports

Abstract

Retrospective reports have long served as the warhorses of experimental and nonexperimental psychologists, although in both classic and contemporary discussions of method, the validity of retrospective reports to understand human thought has been questioned (Ericsson & Simon, 1980; James, 1890/1950; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Psychological data are often obtained as verbal reports from subjects about an event that occurred in their past, for example, “Whom did you vote for in the last election?” or “How friendly is the person described earlier in the experiment?” Implicit in the research enterprise that characterizes contemporary psychology is the assumption that retrospective reports are informative about mental processes and the actions that they guide. Verbal, retrospective self-reports have served as the tool to understanding human values, beliefs, attitudes, attributions, emotions, perceptions, thought, memory, personality, motives, and goals and as indicators of past and future behavior. As such, retrospective report data have defined the central epistemological questions about psychological knowledge: What can the subject know about the past? How can the subject report about it?