One of her sketches
So, recently a girl was so impressed by this site, and the insights, that she regretted not coming across it earlier, would have saved a lot of her precious time. She even went on to compare my writing to that of the protagonist of the TV series ‘Sex and the City’, Carrie Bradshaw. I hadn’t seen the series and ended up at her place to watch it together over drinks.
Her room had the perfect ambiance and lightning. That combined with her ethereal sketches, cute Harry Potter tattoos, and the wide array of drinks was exactly what I needed to get out of my recent low. We skipped the TV series and ended up listening to some soulful music. She is one of the few people with a similar dark and heartfelt playlist to mine. I could see a part of my iconoclastic self in her and didn’t even realize when the night passed away in her company.
Anyway, coming to the MBA concept of the ‘Peak End Rule‘. It is a psychological tool that explains how people remember experiences in their lives. Instead of considering the average or sum of total experience, Peak-End Rule says that we remember the highest or lowest points of an experience and how it concluded.
Behavioral Economists Daniel Kahneman and Barbara Frederickson in their 1993 study found that human memory is rarely a perfectly accurate record of events. We remember experiences in our lives as a series of snapshots rather than a complete catalog of events.
AT&T runs busy stores and found that helping customers visualise the queue reduced anxiety and frustration. An employee greets each customer on arrival and adds them to a visible queue displayed throughout the store. This gives customers the freedom to browse or relax while they track when they’ll be served. The real improvement wasn’t the digital display but the change in behaviour—acknowledging customers’ rights as they enter. Research showed that this simple gesture significantly improved the experience. At checkout, employees walk customers out and shake their hands, reinforcing a positive final impression.
Think about the last time you went on vacation. What do you remember?
Perhaps you remembered a beautiful view from the top of a mountain. Maybe a morning on the beach with your family. You might also have pictured the moment when you thought of losing your passport.
Your last vacation likely stood out for a few strong moments, whether happy or miserable.
Experiences are mostly judged by their end or peaks. We judge an experience by its most intense point and its end, as opposed to the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
The Peak End rule can be applied in the context of modern-day dating. Have you ever had a relationship that ended terribly? You likely remember it negatively more because of how it ended than the relationship itself.
If planning a vacation with your partner, an intense adventure-filled day trip full of high-intensity bursts of excitement (dopamine) may make as many positive memories as a week away at some far-off exotic destination with less to do.
I haven’t had many relationships, but I mostly remember just the peak and the end of each.
To the extent that in numerous memories, I don’t even remember the name of the girl. Like from the ‘elevator pitch’, I still remember matching the beats of that ten-minute long song with the teacher, or from ‘lead time’ I still remember the expression on that Uber driver’s face, or from ‘experience economy’ I remember her dropping me off to my place at the end of the date.
You can put the insights when planning a date. Tap into empathy, end on a high, and make your date feel great about the experience. Studies show we remember moments of intense pleasure, even if those moments are sparse, more fondly than experiences where we are mildly comfortable throughout. You need to get high positive peaks in your interactions with a date. Including fun, spontaneity, and surprises in interactions to fuel up dopamine in the matrix is one of the best ways to create these positive peaks. Reserve the best and most fun moments towards the end of the event so that both of you walk away with warm fuzzy feelings.
Most importantly, you need to remember that people remember negative experiences more vividly than positive ones. Emotionally charged moments of confusion and frustration create “peaks” and strongly shape what the person later remembers.
That brings me to the ‘Sex and the City’ reference girl. So is this it? Have I finally found the rendition of my dark songs? Is my iconoclastic reflection finally in my life?
As I left that morning, her washroom door auto-locked, and the interaction ended on a sour note.
That combined with incompatibility in the bottom two quadrants of KF4D and lack of positive peaks, made the memory lackadaisical. Although that night with her beautiful sketches and Harry Potter tattoos would definitely imprint the positive peaks of the encounter in my memory for quite some time.
Later,
Sidhant
