Frequent Monitoring Makes Change Seem Slower

What is it about?

We show that, when people monitor progress or change—whether that be a worker's output, the spread of a virus, a boy's growth, atmosphere pollution, or even investment returns—the rate of change seems to slow down as the monitoring frequency increases. We show that this is not because people lose track of how much time is passing between check-ins, but rather because they fail to make appropriate use of the information they remember. These effects are robust to financial incentives for accuracy but—despite being quite robust—vary in size depending on how information about change is presented.

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Why is it important?

Many real-world decisions are based on attributes’ perceived rate of change. People will allocate more resources to stop the spread of a novel virus, will reallocate their investment portfolios, and will support funding and policies to curb pollution, all depending on how quickly relevant targets (e.g., disease transmissions, investment returns, CO2 emissions) are growing. These decisions should be based on actual rates of change. If perceivers’ own frequency of monitoring leads perceptions to become divorced from reality, this can lead to suboptimal decisions.

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