Forming Global Retrospective Evaluation: Duration Neglect and the Peak-End Rule

The impact of past experiences on decisions about the future depends on the evaluation of those experiences. When examining the relationship between ongoing and global affective ratings, the results indicate that global ratings of past affective experiences do not encompass information about the duration of an experience. In other words, people are prone to neglect duration. They usually follow the peak-end rule, basing their global rating just on the most intense and the last moment of an experience. In this article, the results of the most important experimental and real-world research are presented. Evaluation by moments and judgment by prototype paradigms along with the used methodology are described in detail. A discussion about normativity of duration neglect is brought up. Despite the fact that these phenomena have been found in a variety of areas, a series of studies and theoretical assumptions call into question their incidence. The article concludes with a discussion about potential prescriptions with which the quality of experiences could be improved.