Why The End Matters: Peak-End Rule for Business Success

The Peak-End rule is a cognitive bias in which people evaluate an experience based on how they felt at the most intense point (the peak) and at the end of the experience, rather than based on the experience as a whole or on a rational evaluation of the individual moments within the experience. In other words, people remember and judge an experience based on how they felt at the most emotionally intense moment and how they felt at the end of the experience.

A critical lesson — how individuals remember a certain experience may be just as important as the experience itself.

A few studies and experiments —

In one study, participants were asked to immerse one hand in cold water for a set amount of time. In one condition, participants were instructed to keep their hands in the cold water until the end of the experiment. In another condition, participants were instructed to keep their hands in the cold water for an additional 30 seconds, but during this time the water was slowly warmed up. Participants in the second condition reported less discomfort overall, despite the fact that they spent more time in the cold water.

In another study, patients who had undergone a colonoscopy were asked to rate their level of pain during the procedure. Patients who had a…