Duration neglect

Duration neglect is the psychological observation that people's judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Multiple experiments have found that these judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak (when the experience was the most painful) and how quickly the pain diminishes. If it diminishes more slowly, the experience is judged to be less painful. Hence, the term "peak–end rule" describes this process of evaluation.[1][2]

Duration neglect is a specific form of the more general extension neglect.

  1. ^ Ronald Ross Watson; Colin R. Martin (15 April 2011). Handbook of Behavior, Food and Nutrition. Springer. p. 669. ISBN 978-0-387-92271-3. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  2. ^ Keith J. Holyoak; Robert G. Morrison (18 April 2005). The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning. Cambridge University Press. pp. 284–. ISBN 978-0-521-82417-0.