Simulations of natural smoothing of paleomagnetic reversal records suggest that illustrative features of actual field behavior may be made undiscernible even when relatively short integration times are associated with the acquisition of magnetic remanence. The results of this exercise further caution against the sole use of logs of component behavior (i.e. declination, inclination and intensity) for analysis, since time‐averaging of the complete vector field not only smooths, but also can significantly alter the component paleomagnetic waveform