State v. Henderson and the New Model Jury Charges - New Jersey ...

Duration
• Witnesses frequently overestimate the
length of an event
• Also true of estimates of conversation
lengths
• Police and DA will try to stretch incident (so
ask questions to shorten events)
• 30 seconds = 2 minutes 32 seconds*
• The greater the stress, the greater the
degree of overestimation
*Loftus et al., Time Went by so Slowly:
Overestimation of Event Duration by Males
and Females, 1 APPLIED COGNITIVE
PSYCHOL. 3 (1987)