7272019 Amy M Do Alexander v Rupert And George Wolford - Evaluation of Pleasurable Experience

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullamy-m-do-alexander-v-rupert-and-george-wolford-evaluation-of-pleasurable 13Copyright 2008 Psychonomic Society Inc 96

Kahneman Fredrickson Schreiber and Redelmeier (1993) found that participants preferred 60 sec of 14ordmCice water followed by 30 sec of 15ordmC ice water to 60 secof 14ordmC ice water alone This result is counterintuitivesince water at both 14ordmC and 15ordmC is unpleasant Peopleseemed to prefer and directly choose more pain over less pain in this situation The authors suggested that pain rat-ings are influenced by the peak pain experienced duringthe episode and the final level of painmdashthe peakndashend ruleThe peakndashend rule for pain ratings has been confirmed in several other experiments Redelmeier and Kahneman

(1996) found that patients rated colonoscopies as less un- pleasant if an interval of mild pain was added to the end of the procedure Patientsrsquo memories of the pain experienced during a colonoscopy were correlated with predictionsof the peakndashend rule (Redelmeier amp Kahneman 1996)Schreiber and Kahneman (2000) showed that ratings of unpleasantly loud sounds showed clear peakndashend effectsFredrickson (2000) reviewed a large number of experi-ments supporting the peakndashend rule The peakndashend ruleyields the counterintuitive result that conditions can read-ily be arranged in which people prefer and choose a condi-

tion with objectively more pain as long as the episode endson a relatively less painful noteIn the realm of positive experiences Diener Wirtz and

Oishi (2001) conducted studies in which participants rated a wonderful life that ended suddenly as better than onewith the addition of mildly pleasant years They termed this the James Dean effect In addition television com-mercials that induce positive feelings are rated morehighly by consumers if the commercials have high peaksof intensity and strong positive endings (BaumgartnerSujan amp Padgett 1997) Participants in Fredrickson and Kahnemanrsquos (1993) study viewed a series of video clips

that varied in pleasantness and duration The data indicate

that people essentially disregard the duration of an affec-tive episode when making retrospective assessments and that they heavily rely on just one or two moments in theepisode (Fredrickson amp Kahneman 1993)

Simonson Carmon and OrsquoCurry (1994) showed thatin some cases added features and offered promotions canlead participants to rate a brand lower even when the fea-tures are seen as neutral or positive and the promotions arecompletely optional Their research is not directly relevantto the peakndashend rule in that the information about prod-ucts promotions andor features was available simulta-

neously rather than sequentially Further their researchdiffered from both previous research on the peakndashend ruleand our research in that the presence of the features and promotions affords inferences about the primary productthat could affect the ratings (eg ldquothe product must bedeficient if they have to offer promotionsrdquo) Our researchdoes not afford such inferences

By extrapolating the various peakndashend findings to thedomain of pleasurable goods we predicted that peoplewould retrospectively report lower levels of overall plea-sure for a desirable gift if a positive but less desirable gift

were added to it even though the addition of this second gift objectively increases the total worth In this way peo- ple would irrationally rate experiences with objectively lessoverall pleasure higher than experiences with objectivelygreater overall pleasure We conducted two experiments inorder to investigate this counterintuitive hypothesis

ExpErimEnt 1

mehdOver the course of several months three charitable fundraisers

were conducted at Dartmouth College during which undergraduatestudents made monetary donations to nonprofit organizations All of

the money collected went to the designated charities Donors were

Evala f leaable eeeethe eakndashed le

Amy m Do AlexAnDer V r upert AnD GeorGe WolforD Dartmouth College Hanover New Hampshire

Prior research suggests that the addition of mild pain to an aversive event may lead people to prefer and di-

rectly choose more pain over less pain (Kahneman Fredrickson Schreiber amp Redelmeier 1993) Kahneman

et al suggest that pain ratings are based on a combination of peak pain and final pain Similarly people rate a

happy life that ends suddenly as being better than one with additional years of mild happiness (Diener Wirtz amp

Oishi 2001) even though the former objectively consists of less pleasure than the latter Applying these concepts

to material goods we investigated the impact of positivity and timing on the retrospective evaluations of material

goods We found strong evidence that the peakndashend rule applies to both material goods and pain

Psychonomic Bulletin amp Review2008 15 (1) 96-98doi 103758PBR15196

G Wolford wolforddartmouthedu

7272019 Amy M Do Alexander v Rupert And George Wolford - Evaluation of Pleasurable Experience

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullamy-m-do-alexander-v-rupert-and-george-wolford-evaluation-of-pleasurable 23

Pleasurable exPeriences and the Peak ndashe nd r ule 97

informed that they could enter a ldquorafflerdquo for a chance to win freeDVDs All of the donors were later contacted via e-mail and told thatthey had won one or two DVDs from the raffle and that they would beable to choose their free DVDs from the list(s) attached to the e-mailParticipants were contacted through the e-mail account of a nonprofitorganization in order to eliminate suspicion that the DVD raffle was

part of a psychological experimentParticipants were presented with the pleasure-inducing opportunity

to select free DVDs from one or two predetermined lists Two dif-ferent DVD lists were used List A consisted of 10 movies that wererated highly on wwwrottentomatoescom (ratings are based on usersrsquoopinions) List B consisted of 10 movies that were rated positively onwwwrottentomatoescom but less so than those on List A The ldquovery

pleasingrdquo experience involved choosing a free DVD from List A Theldquomildly pleasingrdquo experience involved choosing a free DVD fromList B Participants voluntarily took part in the experiment by respond-ing to the DVD offer via e-mail All participants who were offered afree DVDmdasheven one from List Bmdashvoluntarily chose to receive onesuggesting that the movies from List B were seen as positive for these

participantsThe participants were randomly divided into one of five groups

(see Table 1) Group A received a DVD from List A only Group A1

Breceived a DVD from List A and a second DVD from List B The par-ticipants in Group A1B viewed List B via a second e-mail only after they had chosen their first DVD from List A There were three addi-tional control groups to aid in interpreting any observed differences

between Groups A and A1B The control groups were B B1A and A1A After making all of their DVD selections participants wereasked to rate how pleased they were with the overall experience of receiving the DVD offer on a scale that ranged from 1 (least pleased )to 7 (most pleased ) Participants were also asked to provide an expla-nation for their rating We had approval from the Institutional ReviewBoard (IRB) to carry out this experiment without prior informed con-sent The DVDs were delivered to the participants on a later datealong with a letter that served to debrief them

relThe participants recruited from all three fundraisers

were combined in the statistical analysis for a total of 104 participants On the basis of their written comments tothe free DVD offer 4 of the participants were eliminatedThey made comments that indicated that our DVD listswere not viewed as intended in their cases (one in eachof four different groups) For instance 1 participant inGroup A1B wrote that one of the movies from List B washis ldquoall time favorite movierdquo A 2nd participant thought

the List A movies were all ldquoestablishmentrdquo The analysesare based on the 100 remaining participants

The results are displayed in Table 1 Because our datamay not fully have met the assumptions for parametrictests we carried out a KruskalndashWallis H test on the fivegroups followed by three MannndashWhitney U tests to ex-amine three specific contrasts The H test was significant[χ2(4)5 418 p 001] Using MannndashWhitney tests wefound that the mean rank pleasure rating of Group A wassignificantly greater than that of Group A1B ( z 5 331 p5 001) Group A was not significantly different fromGroup B1A ( z 5 134 p5 179) Group A1B was signif-

icantly different from Group B1A ( z 5 208 p5 045)

ExpErimEnt 2

mehd ad pedeA smaller-scale experiment was conducted in order to attempt to

replicate the results of Experiment 1 in a different population and

context Experiment 2 was conducted at a residential house that wasroutinely visited by elementary school and middle school childrenon Halloween night (see Santino 1981 for a description of Hallow-een customs) Participants consisted of ldquotrick-or-treatersrdquo who wereold enough (mean age 5 1003 SD5 179) to answer the surveyquestion ldquoHow happy are you with the candy that I gave yourdquo by

pointing to a ldquosmiley facerdquo on a smiley-face happiness scale Sevenout of 28 (25) of the participants were female

On the night of Halloween trick-or-treaters were given differentcombinations of candy and asked to rate their level of happinessin relation to the candy that they were given The ldquovery pleasingrdquotreat was a full-size Hersheyrsquos chocolate bar The ldquomildly pleas-ingrdquo treat was a piece of bubble gum Permission was granted bythe IRB to conduct the experiment without the prior consent of the

participantsTrick-or-treaters were assigned to one of four groups (A A1B

A1A and B) Because the comparison of Groups A and A1B wasthe critical assessment in the experiment and because it was not pos-sible to accurately predict how many participants would be recruited that night group assignment was biased toward the first two groupsin order to ensure that there would be enough participants for a statis-

tical comparison of these two groups Specifically participants had athree-eighths probability of being assigned to Group A a three-eights probability of being assigned to Group A1B and a one-eighth prob-ability of being assigned to each of the other groups

All participants who were offered the bubble gum voluntarily ac-cepted it which suggests that the experience of receiving the gumwas positive After participants were presented with their candy theywere shown a picture of seven smiley faces each expressing a differ-ent level of happiness The first smiley face appeared ldquoneutralrdquo (themouth was drawn as a horizontal line) and the seventh smiley faceappeared ldquomost pleasedrdquo (the mouth was drawn as a wide open-mouthed grin) The other smiley faces varied on a continuum be-tween these two extremes Participants were asked to indicate whichsmiley face reflected how happy they were with the candy that was

given to them Afterward trick-or-treaters and their adult compan-ions were given a letter that served to debrief them

relThe results are displayed in Table 2 Every child in

Groups A and A1A responded with the top rating of 7 Wecarried out a KruskalndashWallis H test on the four groups fol-lowed by one planned comparison The H test was significant[χ2(3)5 1804 p 001] Using a Mannndash Whitney U testwe found that the mean rank pleasure rating of Group Awas significantly greater than that of Group A1B ( z 5 296 p5 003)1 The results of Experiment 2 replicated the key finding of Experiment 1 demonstrating that two

table 1

mea rag A a F f G Eee 1

Group N M Median SE

A 29 521 500 017A1B 21 414 400 026B1A 17 482 500 023A1A 19 550 550 022B 14 257 250 029

table 2

mea rag A a F f G Eee 2

Group N M Median SE

A 10 700 700 000A1B 11 591 600 039A1A 4 700 700 000B 3 300 300 000

7272019 Amy M Do Alexander v Rupert And George Wolford - Evaluation of Pleasurable Experience

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullamy-m-do-alexander-v-rupert-and-george-wolford-evaluation-of-pleasurable 23

Pleasurable exPeriences and the Peak ndashe nd r ule 97

informed that they could enter a ldquorafflerdquo for a chance to win freeDVDs All of the donors were later contacted via e-mail and told thatthey had won one or two DVDs from the raffle and that they would beable to choose their free DVDs from the list(s) attached to the e-mailParticipants were contacted through the e-mail account of a nonprofitorganization in order to eliminate suspicion that the DVD raffle was

part of a psychological experimentParticipants were presented with the pleasure-inducing opportunity

to select free DVDs from one or two predetermined lists Two dif-ferent DVD lists were used List A consisted of 10 movies that wererated highly on wwwrottentomatoescom (ratings are based on usersrsquoopinions) List B consisted of 10 movies that were rated positively onwwwrottentomatoescom but less so than those on List A The ldquovery

pleasingrdquo experience involved choosing a free DVD from List A Theldquomildly pleasingrdquo experience involved choosing a free DVD fromList B Participants voluntarily took part in the experiment by respond-ing to the DVD offer via e-mail All participants who were offered afree DVDmdasheven one from List Bmdashvoluntarily chose to receive onesuggesting that the movies from List B were seen as positive for these

participantsThe participants were randomly divided into one of five groups

(see Table 1) Group A received a DVD from List A only Group A1

Breceived a DVD from List A and a second DVD from List B The par-ticipants in Group A1B viewed List B via a second e-mail only after they had chosen their first DVD from List A There were three addi-tional control groups to aid in interpreting any observed differences

between Groups A and A1B The control groups were B B1A and A1A After making all of their DVD selections participants wereasked to rate how pleased they were with the overall experience of receiving the DVD offer on a scale that ranged from 1 (least pleased )to 7 (most pleased ) Participants were also asked to provide an expla-nation for their rating We had approval from the Institutional ReviewBoard (IRB) to carry out this experiment without prior informed con-sent The DVDs were delivered to the participants on a later datealong with a letter that served to debrief them

relThe participants recruited from all three fundraisers

were combined in the statistical analysis for a total of 104 participants On the basis of their written comments tothe free DVD offer 4 of the participants were eliminatedThey made comments that indicated that our DVD listswere not viewed as intended in their cases (one in eachof four different groups) For instance 1 participant inGroup A1B wrote that one of the movies from List B washis ldquoall time favorite movierdquo A 2nd participant thought

the List A movies were all ldquoestablishmentrdquo The analysesare based on the 100 remaining participants

The results are displayed in Table 1 Because our datamay not fully have met the assumptions for parametrictests we carried out a KruskalndashWallis H test on the fivegroups followed by three MannndashWhitney U tests to ex-amine three specific contrasts The H test was significant[χ2(4)5 418 p 001] Using MannndashWhitney tests wefound that the mean rank pleasure rating of Group A wassignificantly greater than that of Group A1B ( z 5 331 p5 001) Group A was not significantly different fromGroup B1A ( z 5 134 p5 179) Group A1B was signif-

icantly different from Group B1A ( z 5 208 p5 045)

ExpErimEnt 2

mehd ad pedeA smaller-scale experiment was conducted in order to attempt to

replicate the results of Experiment 1 in a different population and

context Experiment 2 was conducted at a residential house that wasroutinely visited by elementary school and middle school childrenon Halloween night (see Santino 1981 for a description of Hallow-een customs) Participants consisted of ldquotrick-or-treatersrdquo who wereold enough (mean age 5 1003 SD5 179) to answer the surveyquestion ldquoHow happy are you with the candy that I gave yourdquo by

pointing to a ldquosmiley facerdquo on a smiley-face happiness scale Sevenout of 28 (25) of the participants were female

On the night of Halloween trick-or-treaters were given differentcombinations of candy and asked to rate their level of happinessin relation to the candy that they were given The ldquovery pleasingrdquotreat was a full-size Hersheyrsquos chocolate bar The ldquomildly pleas-ingrdquo treat was a piece of bubble gum Permission was granted bythe IRB to conduct the experiment without the prior consent of the

participantsTrick-or-treaters were assigned to one of four groups (A A1B

A1A and B) Because the comparison of Groups A and A1B wasthe critical assessment in the experiment and because it was not pos-sible to accurately predict how many participants would be recruited that night group assignment was biased toward the first two groupsin order to ensure that there would be enough participants for a statis-

tical comparison of these two groups Specifically participants had athree-eighths probability of being assigned to Group A a three-eights probability of being assigned to Group A1B and a one-eighth prob-ability of being assigned to each of the other groups

All participants who were offered the bubble gum voluntarily ac-cepted it which suggests that the experience of receiving the gumwas positive After participants were presented with their candy theywere shown a picture of seven smiley faces each expressing a differ-ent level of happiness The first smiley face appeared ldquoneutralrdquo (themouth was drawn as a horizontal line) and the seventh smiley faceappeared ldquomost pleasedrdquo (the mouth was drawn as a wide open-mouthed grin) The other smiley faces varied on a continuum be-tween these two extremes Participants were asked to indicate whichsmiley face reflected how happy they were with the candy that was

given to them Afterward trick-or-treaters and their adult compan-ions were given a letter that served to debrief them

relThe results are displayed in Table 2 Every child in

Groups A and A1A responded with the top rating of 7 Wecarried out a KruskalndashWallis H test on the four groups fol-lowed by one planned comparison The H test was significant[χ2(3)5 1804 p 001] Using a Mannndash Whitney U testwe found that the mean rank pleasure rating of Group Awas significantly greater than that of Group A1B ( z 5 296 p5 003)1 The results of Experiment 2 replicated the key finding of Experiment 1 demonstrating that two

table 1

mea rag A a F f G Eee 1

Group N M Median SE

A 29 521 500 017A1B 21 414 400 026B1A 17 482 500 023A1A 19 550 550 022B 14 257 250 029

table 2

mea rag A a F f G Eee 2

Group N M Median SE

A 10 700 700 000A1B 11 591 600 039A1A 4 700 700 000B 3 300 300 000

7272019 Amy M Do Alexander v Rupert And George Wolford - Evaluation of Pleasurable Experience

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullamy-m-do-alexander-v-rupert-and-george-wolford-evaluation-of-pleasurable 33

98 do r uPert and Wolford

positives are given a lower rating than a single positive if the second item is less positive than the first

Discussion

The results of both Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 sup- port the hypothesis that people report lower levels of overall

pleasure with the addition of mild pleasure at the end of anexperience In this way people rate less pleasure higher thanmore pleasure All of the participants in Group B rated theexperience as positively pleasurable with a mean rating of 257 in Experiment 1 and a mean rating of 300 in Experi-ment 2 We made it clear in both experiments that a rating of ldquo1rdquo was considered neutral In addition participants volun-tarily made a selection from List B movies in Experiment 1and happily accepted the gum in Experiment 2 which im- plies that these items were seen as positive There were evenspontaneous expressions of pleasure from a few of the par-ticipants in Group B in both Experiments 1 and 2 It is of course possible that a particular participant would find theList B movies or the ldquomildly pleasingrdquo candy aversive butwe doubt that was the case for many of the participants

In Experiment 1 Group A1A had a higher averagerating than did Group A although this difference is notstatistically significant In Experiment 2 the two groupswere equal The lack of significance could be due to a ceil-ing effectmdashespecially in Experiment 2mdashbut this resultdoes eliminate the possibility that simply receiving twoitems (eg two DVDs or two pieces of candy) is worsethan receiving a single item

In Experiment 1 the mean rating of Group A was notsignificantly different from that of Group B1A and themean rating of Group B1A was significantly higher thanthat of Group A1B These results suggest that order iscrucial and they confirm that the peakndashend rule is appli-cable to pleasurable experiences particularly to pleasurederived from material gains

The peakndashend rule presumably applies to episodes thatare viewed as one joint event In Experiment 1 participantswere specifically asked to rate how pleased they were withthe ldquooverallrdquo DVD offer In Experiment 2 participantswere asked to rate how pleased they were ldquowith the candythat I gave yourdquo This wording was intended to encouragethe participants in Experiment 1 to perceive the overallexperience of receiving two free DVDs as one cohesiveevent and to encourage those in Experiment 2 to perceivethe overall experience of receiving two pieces of candy asone joint experience The strongly significant difference between Groups A1B and B in both experiments rules out

the possibility that the ratings were determined entirely bythe last item received However an implementation of the peakndashend rule in which the two items are combined in aweighted averagemdashwith the latter item receiving a higher weightmdashis consistent with our results

The results of this study support the idea that the effectsfound in retrospective evaluations of pain are applicable to

evaluations of pleasure If you were planning to give mul-tiple gifts for a future holiday you might consider givingonly the best onemdashor at least making sure that you givethe best one last

AutHor notE

We thank the Lincoln Filene Fund at Dartmouth College for supportingthis research Address correspondence to G Wolford 6207 Moore HallDartmouth College Hanover NH 03755 (e-mail wolforddartmouthedu)

rEFErEncEs

Baumgartner H Sujan M amp Padgett D (1997) Patterns of af-fective reactions to advertisements The integration of moment-to-moment responses into overall judgments Journal of Marketing Re-

search 32 219-232Diener E Wirtz D amp Oishi S (2001) End effects of rated life qual-

ity The James Dean effect Psychological Science 12 124-128Fredrickson B L (2000) Extracting meaning from past affective

experiences The importance of peaks ends and specific emotionsCognition amp Emotion 14 577-606

Fredrickson B L amp Kahneman D (1993) Duration neglect in ret-rospective evaluations of affective episodes Journal of Personality ampSocial Psychology 65 44-55

Kahneman D Fredrickson B L Schreiber C A amp Redel-

meier D A (1993) When more pain is preferred to less Adding a better end Psychological Science 4 401-405

Redelmeier D A amp Kahneman D (1996) Patientsrsquo memories of painful medical treatments Real-time and retrospective evaluationsof two minimally invasive procedures Pain 66 3-8

Santino J (1981) Halloween in America Contemporary customs and performances Western Folklore 41 1-20

Schreiber C A amp Kahneman D (2000) Determinants of the re-membered utility of aversive sounds Journal of Experimental Psy-chology 129 27-42

Simonson I Carmon Z amp OrsquoCurry S (1994) Experimental evi-dence on the negative effect of product features and sales promotionson brand choice Marketing Science 13 23-40

notE

1 Because there were so many tied scores we also carried out a χ2 testof Group A versus Group A1B We dichotomized the ratings into thoseof 7 versus all of the others [χ2(1) 5 9545 p 5 002] A two-sided Fisher exact test yielded a p value of 004

(Manuscript received August 22 2006revision accepted for publication May 15 2007)