Penn
01-05-2015, 07:20
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains this discrepancy by differentiating between happiness according to the "experiencing self" compared to the "remembering self": when asked to reflect on experiences, memory biases like the Peak-End effect (e.g. we mostly remember the dramatic parts of a vacation, and how it was at the end) play a large role. A striking finding was in a study of colonoscopy patients. Adding 60 seconds to this invasive procedure, Kahneman found participants reported the colonoscopy as more pleasant. This was attributed to making sure the colonoscopy instrument was not moved during the extra 60 seconds - movement is the source of the most discomfort. Thus, Kahneman was appealing to the remembering self's tendency to focus on the end of the experience. Such findings help explain human error in affective forecasting - people's ability to predict their future emotional states