The Experiment That Shouldn't Work
Muller replicates a 1993 experiment by Daniel Kahneman (not Conan as transcribed) and Barbara Frederickson where participants submerge their hand in 14°C water for 60 seconds, then rate discomfort. But the actual test comes after: when asked which trial they'd prefer to repeat, nearly 70% chose the longer one — even though it included an additional 30 seconds of pain. "The longer trial just added an additional 30 seconds with the water warming by just one degree," Muller explains. "This was still uncomfortable and it was 50% longer and yet it's the trial most people preferred."
This is the core puzzle the piece poses: how can people choose to repeat more pain?
The Two Selves
The answer lies in what Kahneman calls the experiencing self versus the remembering self. "If you're going through something unpleasant and someone offers you the chance to stop," Muller writes, "the experiencing self will likely take them up on the offer." But the remembering self operates differently — duration doesn't much matter to memory.
Memory doesn't make films it makes photographs, and those photographs usually capture the most intense salient moments of the experience.
This is what psychologists call duration neglect. A 2008 study found that the length of a vacation "did not have any impact on how positively the vacation was remembered." What matters instead are key moments — particularly peaks and endings.
The Representativeness Trap
Muller spends considerable time on representativeness heuristic, the mental shortcut we rely on constantly. He uses Kahneman's classic Linda problem to illustrate: when asked whether Linda is a bank teller or a bank teller active in feminist movements, most people choose the more specific description — even though mathematically, all feminist bank tellers are by definition bank tellers. "We rely on representativeness all the time as a mental shortcut," Muller observes, "but sometimes it can lead us astray."
The heuristic also explains why we misremember experiences: the most salient moments become representative of the whole experience, regardless of what actually happened in between.
The Ending Matters Most
A striking 2001 study Muller describes involves a woman named Jen. Participants judged her life as either desirable or undesirable based on whether she died at age 30 or lived longer with mildly pleasant years added. "People judged Jen's longer life to be less desirable," Muller reports — living those extra good-but-not-great years actually reduced perceived quality.
The ending matters.
This finding has profound implications: how an experience ends plays "an outsized role in how it's remembered." If the final moments are tainted by pain or negativity, the remembering self recalls the whole experience as worse than it actually was. Muller points to Game of Thrones as a modern example — "the last season of Game of Thrones was so awful I don't think I'll ever watch any of it ever again" — the ending tainted perception of the entire series.
The Practical Proof
Muller doesn't just theorize. He cites a 2003 study whereColonoscopistested adding three minutes of diminished discomfort at the end of procedures. "The patients who experienced the extra 3 minutes of discomfort at the end rated the whole experience as about 10% less unpleasant" — and were more likely to return for follow-up screenings.
This is the peak-end rule in action: both trials involved identical initial pain, but the longer trial ended slightly gentler. "By adding a slightly less uncomfortable 30 seconds," Muller writes, "Conan and Frederickson were able to trick participants into remembering the experience more fondly."
Commercial Applications
The piece closes with practical examples IKEA's exit strategy — cheap hot dogs and ice cream cones at the end of difficult shopping trips create positive associations. "The positive experience of a cheap tasty hot dog or ice cream cone leads to a better memory of the whole shopping experience." It's essentially a lollipop after a pediatric checkup: knowing how memory works lets designers engineer experiences people will recall more fondly.
Counterpoints Worth Considering
Critics might reasonably question whether optimizing for peak and end creates false memories. If we trick ourselves into preferring longer pain, are we actually making experiences better — or just fooling our remembering selves while the experiencing self still suffers? The colonoscopy study shows follow-up behavior improved, but it doesn't measure actual health outcomes.
Additionally, Muller conflates memory of an experience with the quality of life itself. The Jen study suggests adding pleasant years to a good life decreases perceived quality — which seems to argue against trying to improve your life through duration. But this logic applies to retrospective evaluation, not prospective choice: people planning vacations still want longer experiences.
This is clearly a bad choice for the experiencing self but a good choice for the remembering self.
Bottom Line
The strongest thread running through Muller's piece is that our memories don't work like video cameras — they take photographs, not films. The biggest vulnerability is practical: knowing this cognitive bias helps you design better experiences (the IKEA hot dog example), but it also reveals how easily we're manipulated by endings and peaks. The colonoscopy study shows real-world benefit, but the principle works just as well for anyone trying to sell you something that ends on a high note — including content creators optimizing their YouTube closings with wholesome messages and cute dogs.
The insight is genuinely useful; the danger is recognizing when you're the product being optimized.