Looking Forward and Looking Back

Past events are perceived to be temporally more distant when they are unlikely rather than likely to reoccur in the future. This can be because (a) future events that are unlikely to occur are perceived to be temporally remote and (b) these feelings of remoteness can generalize and influence subjective distance judgments of the events' occurrences in the past. Six studies confirmed this effect and provided insights into the processes that underlie it. Alternative interpretations and implications of the current findings are discussed.