Dangerous Minds

The Peak-End Theory And Your Manipulative Memory

“I wish I could go back, but wishin is for suckers”

-Coolio z’’l

Do I expect that you will remember every single thing you learn from this newsletter?

No way.  That’s why archives exist.

But what I want is for you to finish reading each newsletter feeling like I sparked your thinking.

In other words, I want to manipulate you.

(You’re welcome!)   

I promise my motives are pure.

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  If you feel good about this newsletter, you will keep coming back for more, and even forgive me if certain issues are subpar.   This is not an accident…    

Starting next week, we are going to begin diving into a number of heuristics, the mental shortcuts that come up every day that detract from our effectiveness.   If we are going to play Moneyball, then we need to dive deeply into how our minds can lead us astray.   And to the extent that I can, I am going to try and connect them, on a cursory level, to the weekly parasha.

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With the impending celebration of Simhat Torah, the ending of one Torah reading cycle, and the beginning of another one, it is time to talk about endings and how they mess with our minds.

Big Idea: Peak-End Rule

Think back to the most transformative Jewish experiences in your life.   

Perhaps it was a life cycle event like your wedding or Bar/Bat Mitzvah, or perhaps it was a year spent in Israel or a summer at camp.   Chances are that anyone reading this newsletter can identify at least one event, probably more.

But when you think back to that experience, what discrete moments within that experience do you remember most?   If you are like me, then the moments you identified tend to either be the best moments of the entire experience, or how the experience felt when you reached the end.

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This is not an accident, which brings us to the peak-end rule.

The peak-end rule states that our memories of past events are primarily shaped by the peak moment during that event, or how a person felt at the end of it.   In this case, “peak” essentially means the moment when our feelings were strongest (good or bad). In a 1993 study, researchers found that participants remembered the experience of having their hand submerged in cold water differently if the temperature was increased slightly at the end.

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  In theory, the participants should not remember the overall experience any differently, but because the end was more pleasant, participants were left with a more positive impression.

Although a heuristic, the peak-end rule is a reminder that mental shortcuts are not inherently “bad” just because our minds can be misled.  For example, I’ve never been pregnant, but given that labor is a terribly painful experience, it can be comforting to spend more time recalling how it felt to hold a healthy baby than the hours of pain beforehand.

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  Researchers even showed how a colonoscopy can be remembered as more pleasant by changing the way the final moments are spent.

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(TMI?)

But beware: If your memory can mislead you, it also means that you can make decisions that are far less objective than you’d like.   What if you have an employee who is terribly unreliable, but incredibly charismatic the few times he/she/they are in front of a large crowd?   What if you claim to love working at your childhood camp, but forget every year how dysfunctional the staff can be most of the time?    

The peak-end rule is a reminder that vivid memories cannot be the sole criteria by which an experience is judged.  For that, leaders need to adopt a mindset that looks at the entire terrain.

P.S.- You may notice that this section included an original sketch note. I am going to try and design a new one each week. Feel free to share far and wide, so long as you give credit for the work and encourage people to subscribe.

Book Summary: The Art of Possibility

I could spend weeks upon weeks praising The Art of Possibility, but this is a great time to introduce the book, which has endless tools.   For purposes of relating it to the peak-end rule, here’s one tool they offer: “Giving Yourself an A.”

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Much like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, there is power in starting off an experience assuming that you will do excellent work, beginning with the end in mind (as Stephen Covey z’’l would say), and then working towards the vision you began with.    And thus co-author Benjamin Zander began a college semester by asking each of his students to write their professor about why they got an “A” before any work took place.    Doing this lines up the efforts required to “produce an outcome,” helping teacher and student align and maximize everyone’s potential (33).

I find juxtaposing giving myself an “A” and the peak-end rule a helpful dyad.  If I start with a vision that explains why I will be successful in an experience, I can compare how I started with how I remember that experience after it comes to a close.    This will not get rid of the heuristic (that’s impossible), but it will provide a filter to compare my expectations with reality.

To paraphrase Coolio, don’t be forced to “live a life that you didn't know.”

Weekly Links

1. Interview with Joshua Foer: Few figures in the Jewish community can actually be credited with multiple truly innovative ideas that they brought to life.   Joshua Foer is one of those people, and I doubt he’s done.    With props from a fellow Josh, here’s an interview with Joshua Foer in eJewishPhilanthropy.     

2. Lunch on Yom Kippur: Any time I see a Jewish organization or leader do something that falls outside my comfort zone as a Jew, I try to become really curious, instead of compulsively reactive.  So dear reader, try to be curious when reading this article in The Washington Post about how one Yom Kippur event for young Jews included lunch (you heard me right).

3. Why Quitting Is Underrated: Annie Duke, who I highlighted in a previous issue, just came out with a new book, Quit.   I am reading it as we speak, and will summarize it in a subsequent issue.  But for now, read this awesome article on why quitting is underrated.   

4. Designing Healing Systems: All leaders need to understand pastoral care, not just clergy.   But what does it mean to create a system that is designed to help people heal?   Read about it here.

5. Getting Big Gifts in Troubled Times: Inflation, recession concerns, global strife, etc.  When the economy is bad (or seen as bad), people give less.   Here’s a perspective on how to buck the trend.

1. We will come back to this when we meet Nir Eyal.

2. I will not get this quote right, but many who studied with Rabbi Joseph Lukinsky z’’l quoted him saying that we should always see our week through the lens of the Parashat HaShavua (weekly Torah portion).

3. For years, when I ran buses for USY on Wheels, I made sure that the last days of the trip had a completely different feel from the rest of the trip.   Call it “manipulation for good.”

4. D. Kahneman, B. Fredrickson, C. Schreiber, & D. Redelmeier, “When more pain is preferred to less: Adding a better end,” in Psychological Science, 4(6) (1993), 401–405.

5. E. Chajut, A. Caspi, R. Chen, M. Hod, & D. Ariely, “In pain thou shalt bring forth children: the peak-and-end rule in recall of labor pain,” in Psychological Science, Dec;25(12) (2014), 2266-71. In other news, happy first birthday to my daughter Ella! Her birthday was this past Friday. Call it “nepotism for good.”

6. D. Redelmeier and D. Kahneman. “Patients' memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures,” in Pain, Jul;66(1) (1996), 3-8.

7. Huge thank you to Judy Elkin, my former executive coach, for first asking me to read this book. This was one of the many fantastic things she taught me.