When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End
This is the cold-water experiment, and it remains the clearest demonstration that people will choose more suffering over less. Participants held one hand in painfully cold water for sixty seconds. On another trial they held the other hand in water at the same temperature for sixty seconds and then kept it there thirty seconds longer while the water was warmed very slightly, still painful but less so. The long trial therefore contained everything the short trial contained plus additional discomfort. Asked which trial they would repeat, a clear majority chose the longer one. Since the long trial was worse by any accounting of total pain, the choice must be driven by how the episode is remembered, and the authors argue that memory is dominated by the worst moment and the final moment. This vault cites it as the foundation of the peak-end rule.
This is the cold-water experiment, and it remains the clearest demonstration that people will choose more suffering over less. Participants held one hand in painfully cold water for sixty seconds. On another trial they held the other hand in water at the same temperature for sixty seconds and then kept it there thirty seconds longer while the water was warmed very slightly, still painful but less so. The long trial therefore contained everything the short trial contained plus additional discomfort. Asked which trial they would repeat, a clear majority chose the longer one. Since the long trial was worse by any accounting of total pain, the choice must be driven by how the episode is remembered, and the authors argue that memory is dominated by the worst moment and the final moment. This vault cites it as the foundation of the peak-end rule.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Kahneman, D., Fredrickson, B. L., Schreiber, C. A. & Redelmeier, D. A. (1993). "When more pain is preferred to less: adding a better end." Psychological Science, 4(6), 401-405. The cold-pressor study: 60 seconds at 14 degrees, versus the same 60 seconds plus 30 seconds rising to 15 degrees. The widely quoted 69 per cent preferring the longer trial is taken from secondary descriptions and has not been checked against the original results table, which is why no percentage is printed in the body.
Where we use it
- Why You Remember the End of a Holiday and Not the Middle, Why We Come Back
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x