How do our memories differ from our experiences?

The peak-end rule

, explained.
Bias

What is the Peak-end Rule?

The peak-end rule is a psychological heuristic that changes the way we recall past events. We remember a memory or judge an experience based on how we felt at its peak moments, as well as how we felt at the end.1

Where this bias occurs

Imagine Sarah, exhausted after hours of intense labor and seemingly never-ending contractions, experiencing waves of overwhelming pain. Yet, as she cradles her newborn baby, crying for the first time, all of the pain suddenly seems distant and insignificant. The joyful rush of holding her child creates a powerful, positive memory that overrides the intense discomfort she endured. This beautiful ending transforms her recollection of childbirth, allowing her to recall it as an incredibly positive experience despite its undeniable hardships.

Now, picture Alex, reflecting on a relationship that lasted several happy years filled with laughter, comfort, and mutual support. Yet, when the relationship ends abruptly in a painful breakup, Alex finds his memories tainted. Despite all the wonderful moments they shared, the intense emotions from their final arguments overshadow his past happiness. Whenever Alex thinks back on this relationship, it’s the sting of heartbreak and the harsh words exchanged at the end that dominate his memory. This overriding memory illustrates how a negative conclusion can dramatically alter the perception of an overall positive experience.25

Both of these examples demonstrate that no one remembers every single moment of their life. When recalling memories, individuals are usually shocked when they understand how biased their memory of an event is. The peak-end rule influences our evaluations of experiences and can impact human behavior, decision making, and perceptions in both positive and negative ways.

But how does our brain decide which memories to keep and which to let fade away?

The peak-end rule is a specific manifestation of the snapshot model.  This framework, originally proposed by Daniel Kahnemann and Barbara Fredrickson, suggests that we remember events using a representational heuristic, where specific moments—akin to snapshots from a vacation—shape our overall perception and assign meaning to the experience.13 However, unlike the curated vacation photos on our smartphones, these defining moments are distinguished by their intensity rather than by being inherently positive or negative.

In the specific case of the peak-end rule, the snapshots we remember are more specific. We tend to recall an event based primarily on its most emotionally intense moments (both good and bad) and how it ends, rather than the entire experience as a whole. However, as the negativity bias tells us, we tend to remember negative experiences more vividly than positive ones.19 

Sources

  1. Kane, L. (2018, December 30). The Peak–End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/peak-end-rule/
  2. Doll, K. (2020, April 02). What is peak-end Theory? A Psychologist Explains How Our Memory Fools Us. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-peak-end-theory/
  3. Sontag, A. (2019, October 21). The Peak End Rule. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://medium.theuxblog.com/the-peak-end-rule-ff7246115248
  4.  Okeke, K. (2019, March 11). Understanding The Peak–end Rule & How It Affects Customer Experience. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://customerthink.com/understanding-the-peak-end-rule-how-it-affects-customer-experience/
  5. Cherry, K. (2019, May 06). How Representativeness Heuristic Influences the Decisions You Make. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.verywellmind.com/representativeness-heuristic-2795805
  6. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1972). Subjective Probability: A Judgment of Representativeness. The Concept of Probability in Psychological Experiments, 25-48. doi:10.1007/978-94-010-2288-0_3
  7. Dutta, Satrajit; Kanungo, Rabindra N.; Freibergs, Vaira (1972). “Retention of affective material: Effects of intensity of affect on retrieval”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 23 (1): 64–80. doi:10.1037/h0032790. PMID 5043005.
  8.  Ochsner, Kevin N. (2000). “Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 129 (2): 242–261. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.129.2.242. PMID 10868336.
  9.  Morewedge, Carey K.; Gilbert, Daniel T.; Wilson, Timothy D. (2005). “The Least Likely of Times How Remembering the Past Biases Forecasts of the Future”. Psychological Science. 16 (8): 626–630. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01585.x. PMID 16102065.
  10.  Definition of Recency Bias. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.davemanuel.com/investor-dictionary/recency-bias/
  11. peak-end Rule: Why You Make Terrible Life Choices. (2020, March 23). Retrieved from https://www.nirandfar.com/peak-end-rule/
  12.  Zenko, Z., Ekkekakis, P., & Ariely, D. (2016). Can You Have Your Vigorous Exercise and Enjoy It Too? Ramping Intensity Down Increases Postexercise, Remembered, and Forecasted Pleasure. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 38(2), 149-159. doi:10.1123/jsep.2015-0286
  13.  Kahneman, Daniel; Fredrickson, Barbara L.; Schreiber, Charles A.; Redelmeier, Donald A. (1993). “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End”. Psychological Science. 4 (6): 401–405. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00589.x.
  14.  Hoogerheide, Vincent; Vink, Marleen; Finn, Bridgid; Raes, An K.; Paas, Fred (2018). “How to Bring the News … Peak-end Effects in Children’s Affective Responses to Peer Assessments of Their Social Behavior”. Cognition and Emotion. 32 (5): 1114–1121. doi:10.1080/02699931.2017.1362375. PMID 28766393
  15.  Miron-Shatz, T (2009). “Evaluating multiepisode events: Boundary conditions for the peak-end rule”. Emotion. 9 (2): 206–13. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.617.2999. doi:10.1037/a0015295. PMID 19348533.
  16. Redelmeier, Donald A; Kahneman, Daniel (1996). “Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures”. Pain. 66 (1): 3–8. doi:10.1016/0304-3959(96)02994-6. PMID 8857625.
  17. Redelmeier, Donald A; Katz, Joel; Kahneman, Daniel (2003). “Memories of colonoscopy: a randomized trial”. Pain. 104 (1–2): 187–194. doi:10.1016/S0304-3959(03)00003-4. hdl:10315/7959. PMID 12855328.
  18. Kane, L. (2018, December 30). The Peak-End Rule: How Impressions Become Memories. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/peak-end-rule/
  19. Loranger, H. (2016, October 23). The Negativity Bias in User Experience. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/negativity-bias-ux/
  20. Consumer Behavior Lab. (n.d.) Disney Parks: How the Peak-End Rule Sparks Delight. Consumer Behavior Lab. https://theconsumerbehaviorlab.com/disney-parks-how-the-peak-end-rule-sparks-delight.php
  21. Do, A. M., Rupert, A. V., & Wolford, G. (2008). Evaluations of pleasurable experiences: The peak-end rule. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(1), 96–98. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.1.96
  22. Zenko, Z., Ekkekakis, P., & Ariely, D. (2016). Can You Have Your Vigorous Exercise and Enjoy it Too? Ramping Intensity Down Increases Postexercise, Remembered, and Forecasted Pleasure. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 38(2), 149-159. 
  23. Baumgartner, H., Sujan, M., & Padgett, D. (1997). Patterns of Affective Reactions to Advertisements: the Integration of Moment-to-Moment Responses into Overall Judgments. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/002224379703400203
  24. Page, G. (2020, July 6). Optimizing Advertising Effectiveness: The Peak-End Rule. Affectiva. https://blog.affectiva.com/optimizing-advertising-effectiveness-the-peak-end-rule
  25. Travers , M. (2025). 3 Ways the Peak-End Rule Can Distort Your Relationships. Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-instincts/202501/3-ways-the-peak-end-rule-can-distort-your-relationships
  26. Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science (185),1124-1131. DOI:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124
  27. Tulving E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In Organization of Memory, ed. E Tulving, W Donaldson 381–403 New York: Academic.
  28. Aspect. (n.d.). Kahneman's Peak-End Rule in Interviews. Aspect. https://aspect-hq.com/hiring-decisions-psychology/kahneman-s-peak-end-rule-in-interviews

About the Authors

A man in a blue, striped shirt smiles while standing indoors, surrounded by green plants and modern office decor.

Dan Pilat

Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.

A smiling man stands in an office, wearing a dark blazer and black shirt, with plants and glass-walled rooms in the background.

Dr. Sekoul Krastev

Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.

About us

We are the leading applied research & innovation consultancy

Our insights are leveraged by the most ambitious organizations

Image

I was blown away with their application and translation of behavioral science into practice. They took a very complex ecosystem and created a series of interventions using an innovative mix of the latest research and creative client co-creation. I was so impressed at the final product they created, which was hugely comprehensive despite the large scope of the client being of the world's most far-reaching and best known consumer brands. I'm excited to see what we can create together in the future.

Heather McKee

BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

GLOBAL COFFEEHOUSE CHAIN PROJECT

OUR CLIENT SUCCESS

$0M

Annual Revenue Increase

By launching a behavioral science practice at the core of the organization, we helped one of the largest insurers in North America realize $30M increase in annual revenue.

0%

Increase in Monthly Users

By redesigning North America's first national digital platform for mental health, we achieved a 52% lift in monthly users and an 83% improvement on clinical assessment.

0%

Reduction In Design Time

By designing a new process and getting buy-in from the C-Suite team, we helped one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world reduce software design time by 75%.

0%

Reduction in Client Drop-Off

By implementing targeted nudges based on proactive interventions, we reduced drop-off rates for 450,000 clients belonging to USA's oldest debt consolidation organizations by 46%

Notes illustration

Eager to learn about how behavioral science can help your organization?