Shakespeare was the first known man to say ‘Alls well that ends well”.Was he a psychologist? Recent experiments by psychologists shows us that it is important for an experience to end well to feel good about it in the future.
Experiments in psychology suggest that what we recall of our experiences and what we actually experienced are different. In a Ted Talk, Daniel Kahneman, a Noble prize-winning economist and psychologist illustrates this concept by recalling a discussion he had with a participant in one of his talks. The participant was narrating his experience in listening to a symphony. He said that he was immensely enjoying listening to a LP record (Vinyl) of a symphony till there was a loud screeching noise at the end due to a scratch on the LP record. The participant said that the screech in the end ruined his entire experience. Kahneman points out that in a 20-minute symphony, the participant had a great experience for over 19 minutes, and it was only the last 30 seconds or so that the participant was annoyed. But while recalling the experience, the participant recalls the entire experience as ruined, instead of recalling the 19 minutes plus listening pleasure he had.
Kahneman’s explains this dissonance by suggesting that we look at ourselves as having two different selves — the experiencing self and the remembering self. When you go to a doctor and he asks you — are you feeling pain now ? It is your experiencing self that answers. But when he asks you the question how have you been feeling the last few days — it is your remembering self that replies. This difference between experience and a recall of that experience has been named ‘Peak end rule’ and it has practical implications for our decisions and behaviour.
Peak-end rule
The Peak end rule says that we only remember the peak of an experience and how it ended. Our memories attach no significance to the duration of the experience. This peculiarity of our remembering self has many implications for how we go about conducting our business and relationships.
Coldwater experiment
In 1993 Kahneman, Fredrickson, Charles Schreiber, and Donald Redelmeier conducted several experiments to understand how people experienced and recalled painful experiences. They asked subjects to immerse their hands in water at 14 degrees centigrade for a period of 60 seconds. In the second trial the same subjects initially kept their hands submerged in the water at a temperature of 14 degrees centigrade for 60 seconds. However, unlike the first trial, the subjects had to keep their hands submerged in water for an additional 30 seconds (making it a total of 90 seconds). In the additional 30 seconds the temperature of the water was gradually raised to 15 degrees centigrade.
When subjects were asked which of the two experiments they were willing to repeat, they preferred to repeat the second experiment, even though they experienced discomfort for a much longer duration than the first experiment. The subjects were clearly showing a preference to an experience that ended better and less painful, while they completely ignored the overall duration of the discomfort.
Colonoscopy experiment
While colonoscopy is no longer a painful procedure, it was a painful one during the time of the experiments. Kahneman, Redelmeier, and Joel Katz conducted this experiment in 1996. They divided colonoscopy patients randomly into two groups. One group went through a normal colonoscopy. The scope was removed as soon as the procedure was completed. For the second group, at the end of the procedure, the scope was not removed but kept in place for an additional three minutes with no movement of the scope. This was uncomfortable but not painful as during the procedure.
When Kahneman and team asked both groups to evaluate their experiences retrospectively, the group who went through the longer duration procedure (additional three minutes) rated their experience as less unpleasant and less painful than the group who went through the normal procedure.
So what?
This tendency of the remembering self to rate an experience has many implications in how we go about building better memories and getting more out of our experiences.
Customer experiences: In any interaction between business and customer, the business could work out systems and internal training to ensure that the customer’s interactions always ended on a happy note, irrespective of how the major part of the interaction has gone. In sales interactions, it is important not only to end each meeting on a positive happy note, it is also important to ensure that the customer’s experience after purchase ends on a happy note.
Performance appraisals and feedback systems: All appraisals and feedback systems have positive and negative elements. When performing performance appraisals, parent and student feedback in educational institutions, or parental feedback to their children, it is useful to keep some positive feedback for the end of the session. When a session ends on a positive note, the appraised has a more positive and happy recall of the session than if the session ends on a negative note. It is not how negative or positive the overall feedback is that matters, what matters to the remembering self is how it ends — on a positive or negative note.
Vacations: The remembering self ignores the duration of an experience, and rates the overall experience only by the peak and end of the experience. Since our appraisal of our experiences is done by the remembering self, it is logical to keep this in mind while planning vacations. The direction it points us is to plan on many short memorable vacations than one long vacation.
Shakespeare’s insight into human nature a few hundred years back has indeed proven to be right by psychologists of today. Maybe we should go back to Shakespeare for more insights on human nature !!.
