Randy Cronk

Randy Cronk

Randy Cronk is a psychologist and the fourth author of Mitchell, Thompson, Peterson and Cronk, 1997, the study that tracked people through three real events with ratings taken before, during and after, and found anticipation and recollection both more positive than the experience itself. That pattern is what is now called rosy retrospection. He has a page here because the paper is cited here and its authors are named in full.

Who they are

This page is short because the record is, and padding it would mean inventing things.

Cronk is named in the vault as a co-author on the 1997 rosy-view studies, and no biographical claim is made here beyond that role. The study, led by Terence Mitchell, followed people through a trip to Europe, a Thanksgiving vacation and a three-week bicycle trip in California, taking ratings in anticipation, during the event and in recollection. Anticipation and recollection were both more positive than the experience, which sat lowest of the three.

The limits travel with the finding. The samples were small, the design is correlational within-person, and the sample sizes are unverified in this vault, so no figure from the study is carried into anything published here. Partial independent support comes from Wirtz, Kruger, Scollon and Diener in 2003. No large replication was located, and the concept sits at mixed: the direction is consistent and the size is not established.

A search for a current profile found nothing that could be tied to him with enough certainty to publish, which the block below records rather than guesses at.

Key papers

Mitchell, T. R., Thompson, L., Peterson, E., & Cronk, R. (1997). "Temporal adjustments in the evaluation of events: The 'rosy view'." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(4), 421-448. Cronk is the fourth author. Terence Mitchell is first author and the paper is credited to him here. Read in abstract only in this vault, and no figure from it is carried.

The vault records no other publication of his, and this page lists none.

Key ideas

The rosy view. Anticipation and recollection are both more positive than the experience they bracket.

The design is the contribution. Three real events, three measurement points, the same people throughout.

The direction is consistent and the size is not established. Small samples, no large replication located, and no figure from the study is carried here.

Sources

  1. Mitchell, T. R., Thompson, L., Peterson, E., & Cronk, R. (1997). "Temporal adjustments in the evaluation of events: The 'rosy view'." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33(4), 421-448. Abstract only.
  2. Wirtz, D., Kruger, J., Scollon, C. N., & Diener, E. (2003). "What to do on spring break?" Psychological Science, 14(5), 520-524. Partial independent support for the pattern.
  3. Vault note: [[Randy Cronk]], which records that he is named as a co-author and that no claim is made beyond that role.