Why does a whole holiday feel like one moment?
· Source: Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber & Redelmeier, Psychological Science, 1993
You spend ten days by the sea, and when someone asks, you tell them about one evening. And the delayed flight home. In 1993, researchers asked people to hold a hand in cold water. Once for sixty seconds. And once for the same sixty seconds, plus thirty more as the water slowly got a little warmer. Later, most chose to repeat the longer one. More pain, but a gentler ending. In a related study with film clips, how long a clip ran hardly changed how people rated it afterwards. Memory barely counts how long something lasted. It leans on the worst moment and the end. Tonight, name your best moment, and how the day ended. And before your next trip is over, plan a calm last evening.