Once and Again: Repeated Viewing Affects Judgments of Spontaneity and Preparation

Reality is fleeting, and any moment can only be experienced once. Rewatching a video, however, allows people to repeatedly observe the exact same moment. We propose that people may fail to fully distinguish between merely observing behavior again (through replay) from that behavior being performed again in the exact same way. Using an assortment of stimuli that included auditions, commercials, and potential trial evidence, we demonstrated through nine experiments (