The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. The effect occurs regardless of whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant. To the heuristic, other information aside from that of the peak and end of the experience is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted. The peak–end rule is thereby a specific form of the more general extension neglect and duration neglect.
Overview
The peak–end rule is an elaboration on the snapshot model of remembered utility proposed by Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman. This model dictates that an event is not judged by the entirety of an experience, but by prototypical moments (or snapshots) as a result of the representativeness heuristic. In addition, people do not always recognize that the events that they remember are more emotionally intense than the "average" event of its kind. This failure to correct for the atypicality of extreme memories can lead people to believe those extreme moments are representative of the "set" being judged. Boston Red Sox fans asked to recall any one game they saw when the Red Sox won, for example, tended to recall the best game they could remember. They only realized this game was unrepresentative of past winning games by the Red Sox if they were explicitly asked to recall the best game they could remember, as evidenced by their subsequent affective forecasts.
Recency bias in memory (i.e., why the end is memorable)
People exhibit serial position effects such that they have better memory for both the beginning and end of sequences, phenomena known as primacy bias and recency bias, respectively. A paper by Garbinsky, Morewedge, and Shiv (2014) found evidence that for extended hedonic experiences, better memory for the end of the experience than the beginning (recency > primacy) can be attributed to memory interference effects. As a person eats potato chips, for example, the formation of a new memory of the most recently eaten chip makes it harder for them to recall how the previously eaten chips tasted. Garbinsky and colleagues found that (1) recency effects better predicted recalled enjoyment of a small meal (e.g., eating 5 or 15 chips) than did primacy effects, (2) that people had a worse memory for the first bite of the meal than the last bite of the meal, but (3) providing people with their ratings of the first bite lead them to use their enjoyment of that first bite as much as their enjoyment of the last bite when rating their overall enjoyment of the meal.
Applications
Business
Customer Service
Since most consumer interactions have set beginnings and ends, they fit the peak–end model. As a consequence, negative occurrences in any consumer interaction can be counteracted by establishing a firmly positive peak and end. This can be accomplished through playing music customers enjoy, giving out free samples, or paying a clerk to hold the door for patrons as they leave. As Scott Stratten has suggested, "A really great salesperson who helps with an exchange can erase negative experiences along the way. The long wait in line and the bad music in the changing room are forgotten".
De Maeyer and Estelami suggest that occasionally raising the price of the brand above the desirable level may restore the reference price for the brand. However, due to its inherent risks, this tactic may only be effective under certain circumstances. First, the tactic should be used only sparingly and for a short period. If the brand adjusts its price level too often, it could confuse customers and may be regarded as "unreliable". A long period of exceptionally high price may distort consumers' price perceptions on the brand and result in a loss of consumers. Second, the tactic is best suited to frequently purchased products (e.g., food, music, fragrance) where the frequency of sales minimizes the impact of the lost sale during the peak-price period.
Turnover
A study by Kang, Daniels, and Schweitzer proposed a "streak-end rule" which extends the peak-end rule to sequences of binary events. They argued that, for sequences of binary events (such as workers being repeatedly assigned to do tasks that are either hard or easy), streaks are the psychological analogue of peaks. They found that volunteer workers' turnover decisions were disproportionately influenced by "streaks" (i.e., when a worker experienced many hard tasks in a row) and "ends" (i.e., when a worker's most recent task was a hard task).
Vacations
In 2006, a study was carried out at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, analyzing the implications of the peak–end rule on the perceived happiness experienced on vacations. The study found that participants' remembered overall happiness was approximately predicted by the peak–end rule, although it was actually better predicted by their happiness during the "most memorable or most unusual 24-h period".
The study contains two experiments with different overall tones, one positive and one negative. In each experiment, students received two versions of assessments with different lengths. In the overall negative assessment, the extended version comprises an extra moderately negative rating at the end. Similarly, the extended positive assessment ends with an additional moderately positive rating. In both experiments, the students reported that the extended assessment was remembered as more pleasant and less difficult to deal with. Based on the result, Hoogerheide advises that teachers should structure the feedback by ending with the best part of the assessment. When the assessment is overall negative, it is better to end with the most pleasant or most easily acceptable part of the negative feedbacks. Similarly, the positive assessment should end on a high note rather than the most unpleasant part.
Criticism
Critiques of the peak–end rule typically derive from its conflation of a complex mental evaluation into a simplistic framework. A 2008 study found some support for the peak–end rule, but also found that it was "not an outstandingly good predictor" of remembered experiential value, and that the happiness of the most memorable part of an experience predicted remembered happiness better than did the happiness of the peak or of the end.
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