A test of the peak-end rule with extended autobiographical events
Kemp and colleagues tested whether the peak-end rule holds for experiences that last days rather than minutes. Forty-nine students on holidays averaging a week sent daily text messages reporting how happy they had been over the past day. Afterwards they rated the holiday overall and tried to recall their day-by-day record. Two findings. Duration again had no effect on the overall evaluation, so duration neglect survives at this scale. But the peak-end rule was not a particularly good predictor of the remembered holiday; several other summary measures did as well or better, and participants could not accurately recall how their happiness had varied. The authors conclude that remembered affect for extended events is substantially reconstructed rather than retrieved. This vault cites it as a limit on the peak-end rule, which is often stated as though it applied to holidays, relationships and careers as readily as to a colonoscopy.
Kemp and colleagues tested whether the peak-end rule holds for experiences that last days rather than minutes. Forty-nine students on holidays averaging a week sent daily text messages reporting how happy they had been over the past day. Afterwards they rated the holiday overall and tried to recall their day-by-day record. Two findings. Duration again had no effect on the overall evaluation, so duration neglect survives at this scale. But the peak-end rule was not a particularly good predictor of the remembered holiday; several other summary measures did as well or better, and participants could not accurately recall how their happiness had varied. The authors conclude that remembered affect for extended events is substantially reconstructed rather than retrieved. This vault cites it as a limit on the peak-end rule, which is often stated as though it applied to holidays, relationships and careers as readily as to a colonoscopy.
Written from the abstract, Europe PMC.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
49 students, holidays averaging seven days, daily happiness ratings sent by text message.
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/10.3758/MC.36.1.132
DOI: 10.3758/MC.36.1.132