Making People Happy (Retrospectively)
Aware that you're involved in something that will involve people having an awful time?
Concerned that they will have unhappy memories after the event?
Unable, or unwilling, to do anything to make the experience itself less unpleasant - but willing to put some effort into improving how fondly people remember it afterwards?
In this case, the Peak-end rule is for you!
People have a somewhat sketchy memory of the overall quality of a period of time. Only two aspects seem to be relevant:
- what it was like at the most intense point
- what it was like right at the end
So if you know you are about to inflict an absolutely terrible time on someone, you can add an extra portion of experience on the end that is still unpleasant - just not nearly as bad as the initial portion - and the subject's memory of how bad things were will be much improved.
An example would be contrasting these two experiences:
- Immersing your hand in near-freezing water for 5 minutes
- Immersing your hand in near-freezing water for 5 minutes, then in very cold water for 1 minute
The second of these two will be preferred retrospectively.