On Delay and Reassessment of Retrospective Preratings

The present study investigated to what extent retrospective preratings are affected by a follow-up assessment, 2 weeks after posttesting, and a delay of the assessment, 2 weeks after treatment. The experiment was performed within an educational training context. Subjects were psychology freshmen fulfilling a course obligation. The design consisted of an experimental, a placebo, and a no-treatment control condition. Immediately after training, posttraining instruments were administered to only half of the subjects. All subjects returned after 2 weeks and filled out the posttraining instruments. Data indicate that a 2-week time interval had no effect on readministered nor on postponed retrospective preratings. In addition, a significant mean difference between conventional and retrospective preratings was found in the experimental and the placebo control conditions. Since no-treatment control subjects did not show significant differences among conventional pre-, post-, and retrospective preratings, data lend support for subjects’ perception of the demand characteristics and effort justification as rival hypotheses for the response-shift interpretation.