UC Berkeley

Reality is fleeting, and any moment can only be experienced once. Re-watching a video, on the other hand, allows people to observe the exact same moment in time repeatedly. We propose that people apply their understanding of repetition in the real world to the replay context, failing to fully distinguish behavior that they merely observe again (through video replay) from that behavior being performed again in the exact same way. Ten experiments (N = 9,334) support this idea across a broad assortment of stimuli that includes auditions, dances, commercials, and public speeches. We demonstrate that re-watching makes a videotaped behavior appear more rehearsed and less spontaneous, as if the actor in the replayed video were simply precisely repeating the same set of actions. We rule out alternate explanations including repetition increasing accuracy of judgments, mere exposure leading to a positivity bias, and experimenter demand effects. These findings build on an influential literature showing that incidental video features like perspective or slow motion can meaningfully change how people judge the action of the video. Video re-watching may inadvertently shape judgments in contexts ranging from mundane to consequential. To understand how a video is going to influence its viewer, one will need to consider not only its content, but also how often it is viewed.