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memory
You remember the intensity of an experience, not duration.
The peak-end rule explains how you evaluate past events based on their most intense moment and their ending.
In a 1993 study, participants chose to extend an uncomfortable experience because the final moments were slightly less painful than the start. The brain ignores the total time spent and creates a summary based on these two specific markers.
You are recording a movie, not keeping a ledger.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Daniel Kahneman, 1993
- What the check found
- The 1993 paper 'When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end' by Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber, and Redelmeier is the definitive source for this finding.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.