Week 11: The wait you remember

Duration neglect and the peak-end rule, and why the last minute of a wait is worth more than the middle of it.

11 May 2027

The wait you report is not the wait you had. Redelmeier and Kahneman measured pain in real time during medical procedures and then asked people afterwards, and what people reported tracked the worst moment and the final moments, with the length of the procedure barely registering.

If that holds for waiting, and the course argues it does, then the end of a wait is worth disproportionately more than the middle. The lecture is about what follows from that, including the parts you should be uneasy about.