Instinct or Introspection?

Making decisions is often easy. One option will bring overwhelming joy whilst the other has nothing desirable about it whatsoever. But sometimes we can find ourselves simply unable to choose. Our automatic gut reaction is telling us one thing and our rational head is telling us something else. Many have previously lamented their choice of a healthier meal in a restaurant when initial instincts called out for the 1000+ calorie option. At the same time I am sure you’ve often been quietly pleased with yourself for having a right old think and eventually coming to an extremely good choice in retrospect. Knowing when to choose (and which to trust) between gut instincts or careful thought would be invaluable. I would like to say I could give you this invaluable information in the next 600-700 words, but I probably can’t. Although we can at least have a look at some research which should be a little helpful.

Our gut instincts serve us very well a lot of the time. Automatically deciding to remove a hand from a boiling hot pan, a momentary decision to run away very fast from a lion, the list goes on. But can we use them out of the jungle and away from danger? Can they be used to improve our choice of jam?
Jam; A highly controversial topic. Timothy Wilson and colleagues decided to use some to examine the relative merits of gut instinct reactions vs. careful thought and selection. The study was quite simple. The researchers provided participants with a number of jams and their task was to give the jams ratings so that they could be ranked. Little did participants know that the researchers had previously arranged for some ‘jam experts’ to rate the jams for their quality and taste.

Participants were split into two groups. One group was asked to analyse why they felt the way they did about the jams before making preference ratings (careful thought condition), whilst the other group of participants just made their preference ratings without engaging in consideration (automatic decision condition) of the jams pro’s and con’s. The big question is – who agreed with the experts more? The answer is the automatic decision condition. The activity of carefully thinking about the pros and cons and reasons why the jam was or wasn’t enjoyable greatly reduced participants ability to spot the good stuff from the bad. Other studies have found similar findings; thinking too much may even inhibit your ability to pick out art work for your home for example.

As you will have probably guessed it isn’t such a one sided affair. Gut reactions cannot always be trusted. Drunken texting is almost definitely testament to this. But alas, there is no research on this that I know of, so instead we will have a look at why we shouldn’t always trust gut reactions when pondering how an American football games will be and when worrying about missing a train. In two studies Morewedge et al. (2005) investigated how we can often rely upon gut reaction information when thinking about the future and how potentially undesirable consequences may stem from this. Previous research suggests that when thinking about the future we are reliant on our memories for similar events. However, when thinking about the past we often rely on stand out memories of experiences which aren’t always typical of the norm. This in turn can lead to making poor predictions about future experiences as you are basing it on a relatively small amount of biased information.

Thus, in one study researchers approached Harvard football fans outside their stadium shortly before a game. Some participants were asked to ‘describe a football game you’ve seen when Harvard won’ and others to ‘describe three games you’ve seen when Harvard won’ and then both groups were asked to predict how enjoyable they thought the game would be. The participants in the 2nd condition (reliant on several memories) made much more realistic predictions about how enjoyable the game would be in comparison to the participants in the 1st condition (reliant on one memory). Realistically every game isn’t going to be amazing and we sometimes forget this. When deciding whether or not to buy tickets for Saturday’s game we think back to a previous game, a really enjoyable one pops into our head (probably because it stands out more) and we are sold on the idea. We’ve based our behaviour on the first thing that springs to mind when we probably should have made more of an effort to consult our memories.

Similarly we can make this kind of error when thinking about bad things too. Missing a train is never fun but at the same time worst things have happened in life. Yet, as we are often reliant on stand out memories that spring to mind (that horrific time that a missed train resulted in you looking and smelling terrible for a job interview), we base our thoughts about the future on an extremely negative gut instinct. Thinking about other occasions in which we missed a train and the world didn’t come to an end makes things seem a lot more like they really will be; not that bad. In these instances a little more careful thought and consideration look like a really good idea.

Does this blog really clear up anything? I would suggest probably not. What we can be quietly confident about is: a) trust our gut instincts with jam and art and b) think a bit more when deciding whether or not to go to a football game or worry too much at the prospect of missing a train. What about careers, love or marmalade? The jury is still out, but perhaps a good rule of thumb is to use ones gut instincts with confidence but at the same time be ready to challenge them with introspection if they seem to be letting us down.

Implications

Avoid shopping for jam or art with a philosopher.

Expect a lot less from American football games and get ready to be pleasantly surprised by missing a train.

Gut instincts seem fine with jam, but what about when things get a little more serious? Be aware that there is a danger of over thinking and starting to add importance to factors that really aren’t that important, such as the number of x’s at the end a text message from a girl (or do they matter?).

I Can Make Me Feel Good

Feeling happy and being in a good mood is extremely enjoyable. The majority of us quite rightly base a lot of our decisions in life based on this principal. We probably choose to share our beds with our partners because being with them makes us happy (or at least we hope they it does. We avoid waiting in long queues and arguing because they quite often put us in bad moods. So how can I be happier? An awful lot of psychology research can have a tendency to point to our failings, mainly suggesting that humans are irrational and a bit weird. The good news is that there is also some research examining what makes people happy and unhappy and what influences our good and bad moods. Here we’ll have a look at a couple of things;

Memories and Gratitude.

Memories. We have an awful lot of them and frequently find ourselves recollecting both the good and bad times. The emergence of polariods, digital camera’s and then Facebook tagging has made this little hobby even easier. Such recollections are likely to have rather significant effects on our mood and as you might imagine, not everybody realises this. Gillihan et al. (2007) were interested in these possibilities and designed a very clever experiment to delve further. Researchers approached members of the public at a large train station in the US armed with 3 different questionnaires. Potential participants were told that the questionnaire would ask them about different experiences in life.

Each of the 3 questionnaires consisted of 19 questions that would prompt the recall of memories from participants’ lives. The ‘positive memories’ questionnaire consisted of a number of questions concerning positive memories; e.g. ‘What is the best present you have ever received?’ The ‘negative memories’ questionnaire consisted of a number of questions concerning negative memories; e.g. ‘When was the last time you had stomach flu?” and the third questionnaire, ‘neutral memories’ consisted of (as you may have guessed) neutral memories; e.g. ‘What time did you wake up this morning?’ At the end of every questionnaires participants were also asked to rate their current mood and what they thought the study was about. Before we get to the results, 326 people agreed to do this study with no payment or reward. Here we have either some lovely evidence of genuine kindness or slightly less optimistically we have evidence that 326 train commuters were extremely bored. Take your pick. As much as I want the former to be the true my money is on boredom.

Mood appeared to be significantly affected by memories participant recalled. Participants that had recalled positive memories were in a better mood than those that had recalled neutral memories. Recalling negative memories placed participants in a more negative mood than remembering neutral memories. The message is, or appears to be – if you are feeling down then can a good think about some nice memories make you feel better. An interesting thought is whether or not such activities as manic camera snapping and Facebook tagging are being driven by these mood enhancing effects of memory. On some kind of unconscious level do we make a huge effort to capture happy moments or at least pretend moments are happy (painted on smiles at the ready) because of how these memories can later be used to regulate our moods?

These results are interesting but it is unlikely that the recall of a memory is going to have a long lasting effect. So what else can be done? According to a study by Froh et al. (2007) the answer is to start showing a little more gratitude. The researchers assigned 211 youths to one of three conditions. The three groups were instructed to spend a little bit of time each week getting expressive by partaking in one of three writing exercises. One group were instructed to write about 5 things they were grateful for, another group wrote 5 of their everyday hassles and the final group wrote about any 5 things that had happened in the last week. To the good news; counting ones blessings had some rather positive effects up to 3 weeks later. Compared to the other groups the gratitude group experienced greater optimism about life, life satisfaction and less negative affect immediately afterwards and then again 3 weeks later.

Although doing this every week may seem a bit odd and hippy-ish my recommendation is to embrace this little bit of oddness. The cost of spending a little time each week writing is enjoyable in itself. Throw in enhanced satisfaction and optimism about life down the line and everybody is a winner.

Application

Think of the good times.

Little Things Count

Part 2: A is for Accountant
In the last blog (that you hopefully read) I discussed research suggesting that the mere colour of a persons clothing can strongly influence whether members of the opposite sex desire to date and have physical relations with them. And of course most people would be likely to be completely unaware of this. Thus, sometimes in life we can be a little ignorant about what is causing us to feel the way we do. However, the question is, does this really matter? Finding a woman slightly more attractive just because she has a red scarf draped around her neck isn’t really that big in the grand scheme of things is it? One could argue that it is, especially if you end up marrying that woman because the effect of the red scarf added that little bit more attraction that made you so intrigued by her. But this is all a bit hypothetical.

Slightly more dramatically research does suggest that extremely subtle factors could have significant influence on what we end up doing with the rest of our lives. Pelham et al 2002 report a series of studies based on previously well established findings that most people tend to have a favourable view of themselves and thus tend to prefer people, places and things they associate with themselves. Based on this, other research has shown that we even tend to have a strong implicit preference for the letters in our own names. Gary seems like to the letter G more so than other letters, and Lucy exhibits behaviour which suggests she has a preference towards the letter L - but this isn’t where it ends.

Pelham et al. were interested in examining whether these preferences towards the letters in our own names can influence major life decisions. Consulting numerous public records, telephone directories, death certificates and professional directories the researchers unearthed some seemingly bizarre results. They found that people were far more likely to live in areas, have careers in and vote for politicians whose names resembled their own first names. Larry is far more likely to be a lawyer than he is a dentist. Whilst the number of dentists named Dennis is disproportionately large.

Additionally, during the Bush-Gore US election individuals whose last names began with B and G were far more likely to contribute to the election funds of the Bush and Gore parties respectively. Out of every woman that gave birth in the state of Texas in 1926, the number of woman later marrying men who shared the same maiden name was 40% above what we would expect by chance.

Collectively these studies appear to suggest that the letters in names have drawn individuals towards certain career choices, election candidates and marriages. And of course nobody knows this is going on. It must be said that it is highly unlikely Larry next door will all of a sudden realise he wants to become a lawyer after several years in hairdressing, as the effect is quite small. But what it does suggest is that the simple letters in names can shift people towards careers that they wouldn’t necessarily have chosen if their parents had opted for a different name. If Chloe had been a Sarah there’s a chance she wouldn’t be cleaning for a living.

It’s fascinating to think that such a small and seemingly meaningless can exert some influence on ones life and to be completely oblivious to it.

Applications

If you happen to know a Susie selling seashells in the Seychelles please forward the link to this blog and take perverse pleasure in watching her reaction.

Little Things Count

Part 1: The colour red
Most of the time you’d think that you bought that bottle of water because you were thirsty and chose that piece of artwork for your unfurnished living room because it is both stylish and a bargain. Sense tells us that we should have a fairly good idea of what is influencing our thoughts and feelings towards something or someone. For example, a previous acquaintance of mine only ever talked about himself, paid no attention to what I had to say and spent much of his time enjoying his own reflection. Thus, I thought that I didn’t particularly like him because of these reasons. However, things aren’t always so obvious. When your eyes catch another’s across a crowded (annoyingly crowded with boys normally), drunken and loud dance floor you can become instantly attracted. It’s a nice feeling, but why am I attracted to Mariya? The dimensions of her face and body? Almost definitely. What about the colour of the scarf she is wearing? Surely not!

A wealth of research suggests that we can often be somewhat ignorant towards what is causing us to the feel the way we do. And it turns out that the colour of Mariya’s scarf (she was wearing a scarf in a club because it was cold if you were wondering) could be quiet important. It could play a much more significant role than you think in influencing whether I do fall head over heels or instead head to the bar for another drink. This two part blog discusses how we can really never be 100% sure as to why we feel the way we do.

If you are both a heterosexual female and in the dating game then my only advice to you is to start wearing the colour red more. The colour red may have particular evolutionary significance when it comes to attraction. Zoologists think that female chimps display heightened redness on their face and genitals in attempt to attract mates during or close to their ovulation period. But what about the colour red in humans? Valentines day is extremely red and women (and men) sometimes like to wear red lipstick. But then again there are many red things that aren’t at all related to attraction: tomatoes and telephone boxes.
A set of experiments by Elliot & Niesta (2008) suggests that red really does matter when it comes to attraction. For example, in one study the researchers showed participants a photo of a fairly attractive girl. This photo remained constant for all participants, apart from the colour of her top; either being red or another colour matched for things like contrast and brightness. Male participants then rated how attractive they found the girl. The results showed that wearing the colour red strongly influenced attraction. Bizarre! Furthermore the influence of this mysterious red effect didn’t just result in a small increase. Wearing the colour red resulted in males reporting that they would be much more likely to ask her on a date and possess a stronger sexual desire towards the lady in red.

An interesting study and introduction to the idea that subtle influences can go a long way, but the length to which small subtle influences can go is far more impressive than just attraction. Why did you end up in the career you find yourself? and with the man you love? Is it because you like them for what and who they are? Or is it because of something much more sinister….. Check for part 2 of this blog for some answers.

Applications so far –

If you are trying to attract a guy don your best red scarf.

If you are trying to attract a girl keep a look out for one dressed in red from head to toe. But no promises, it could mean –
a) she is unconsciously conveying a message of sexual need
b) she has a terrible dress sense

Avoid wearing red when in the company of chimps.

Thinking about the Future

Knowing how you will feel in the future should be straight forward enough shouldn’t it? Having lived for 23 years I should have a pretty good idea about what I do and don’t like and what will and what won’t make me happy. But we don’t always. Far too often we regret choices and get our thoughts about the future terribly wrong. How enjoyable a house party will be, how sick I will feel halfway through a massive dessert I ordered and how unbearable work will be after 4 hours sleep are classic examples. In hindsight you can see that there were a number of reasons why the house party was going to be rubbish and that you shouldn’t have bothered going and therefore shouldn’t be sat moaning about it. But you went and are now moaning. So through the knowledge shared in this blog let us try and do something to prevent it ever happening again (or perhaps more realistically: not as often).

A study by Jepson et al (2001) using a group of patients on the kidney transplant waiting list underlines our failings in affective forecasting (knowing how we will feel in the future). Patients were asked to predict their quality of life one year later if they a) did not receive the transplant they were understandably desperate for and b) if they did get the transplant. A year later some had received transplants and others had not been as lucky and researchers returned and both groups were asked to report their current quality of life. Those that had received a transplant originally over-predicted their quality of life and weren't as happy as they thought they would be. Conversely, those who didn’t get a transplant under predicted their quality of life. They were in fact a lot happier than they had thought they would be. Although it is fairly unlikely that you will ever need a kidney transplant, important lessons can be learnt. First of all, as human beings we are incredibly resilient. We can adapt. Even if some patients didn’t receive the kidney transplant they were desperate for, they still enjoyed life to a far greater extent than they originally imagined. We have all had problems and tribulations that were serious (may not be as major as needing a new organ) but nevertheless we have overcome them and often unexpectedly quickly. The loss of a spouse or parent is heartbreaking and we may think we will never be as happy as we were before, but chances are we will recover and enjoy life once again.

The second important lesson is that when thinking about the future we often 'focalise' or focus too much on 'stand out stuff' and ignore the many other slightly less glamorous but important parts that make up our day to day experiences. The thought of a new kidney or huge lottery win is just often too big and ‘stand out’ for us to think about all the other stuff we will face in the future. For example, getting a new kidney may well be amazing at first but with or without a new kidney the day to day hassles and relationship problems that make our lives less than perfect still remain. Conversely, not receiving that kidney will be a blow and may make you feel down a lot of the time, but birds still sing, food still tastes good and popcorn and scary films still go hand in hand nicely. Changes in circumstance probably will have some impact on some aspects of our life, but one should think carefully what they will and won’t change.

As well as occasionally focalising about the future we can also be strongly influenced by our present state and feelings. Sometimes our present frame of mind determines how we think we will feel in the future even if how we feel in the present has little or no relevance to the future. Hunger is a fine example and research by Read & van Leeuwen (1998) supports the age old piece of wisdom that shopping on an empty stomach is generally a bad idea. Researchers approached office workers and asked them to make a choice between an unhealthy (and filling) or healthy (yet less filling) snack that they would receive a week later after a lunch time meal. Hungrier participants opted for the unhealthier choice significantly more than their satiated counterparts. Even though both groups would have been equally full up a week later the hungry groups present feelings of hunger couldn’t help but influence their feelings about the future.

If you’ve seen a friend getting back with a boyfriend almost immediately after breaking up you may have seen another example of how present feelings distort thoughts about the future. Too often people will break up for a very good reason (i.e. they are less compatible than dieting and fast food) but the inevitable feelings of loneliness that come with the end of any relationship may cause one to change their mind, as based on their current feelings they can’t imagine ever feeling normal again. Resulting in them both getting back on a rickety wagon that wasn’t and still isn’t right for either passenger. Present state drives thoughts about the future and it can be all too easy to forget how different the world will look with time. It could be ordering a ridiculous amount of food that you will never be able to finish when peckish or tricking oneself into thinking our ex-partners make us happy when we are lonely. Thus, it can be all too easy to be trapped in the present when thinking about the future. You have been warned……..

Related Thoughts

Thinking about the future is tricky, especially when we have strong feelings and cravings in the present.

Please bear in mind an extra kidney or lottery win aren’t definite keys to happiness (although I would definitely take the latter and maybe even the former, as one can never be too careful).

Shock horror: shopping on an empty stomach is a bad idea.

Who am I?

We spend every waking minute in our own company. Such continued exposure to our own thoughts, feelings and experiences can make us feel like experts on ‘ourselves’. However things are not always so simple. This blog pursues my earlier discussion on the weaknesses of memory into even murkier waters, suggesting that we sometimes simply have no idea about how we really feel.

There is good reason to believe that deep within our brain there is a lot going on that we don't know about. The current thinking in academic psychology is that our brain is split almost into two distinct ‘minds’ – the unconscious and the conscious. A lot of our brain work goes on unconsciously, in the background and unnoticed. Walking is a perfect example, our brain automatically and unconsciously co-ordinates balance, timing and muscle tone to get us from A to B. Having to think about every aspect of movement – gait, speed, balance etc. would be both mentally exhausting and mind numbingly slow. Such automatic and unconscious work takes place in an older (in terms of evolution) part of the brain which we will call the ‘unconscious mind’. The other part of the brain (which I will aptly name the ‘conscious mind’) is where our conscious and deliberate thinking goes on.

This final part of my little neuroscience lesson is the one to remember though. The two minds won’t always necessarily work in sink. Furthermore, due to the architecture of the brain we can’t just have a good think and look into the unconscious mind to find out what is going on. Take walking – I honestly have no real idea about all the intricate goings on that makes me walk as I do. But psychologists have gone one step further (wank pun) and tested the possibility of hidden attitudes lurking in the unconscious mind. The way to do this is through an implicit test of attitude. In such a test participants are required to quickly categorise two types of pictures when paired with either positive or negative words.

For example, if we consider an implicit attitude test of heroes and villains. When the pictures of heroes are presented with positive words we observe that participants are much faster at correctly categorising the image as a hero. On the other hand, when the pictures of villains are presented with negative words participants are faster at categorising. These finding appears because we have an automatic association between villain and 'bad' and one between hero and 'good'. When two associations match up it facilitates speed and accuracy of categorising. This type of test is interesting as participants are not consciously controlling their response times: it’s an automatic and unconscious measure. In the case of heroes and villains conscious (I like heroes) and unconscious (implicit association between heroes and ‘good’) attitudes match up. But they don’t always.

Fazio et al. (1995) investigated a controversial topic: Race. Examining the implicit attitudes of white participants towards white and black people. Their first finding was that the white participants differed in their reaction times by racial profile of photograph: suggestive of a stronger negative association towards blacks over whites. Additionally, participants also filled out a questionnaire asking about attitudes towards racial issues and prejudice, before finally meeting with a black confederate for a brief chat. Unbeknown to participants ratings were made by the black guy on how friendly and interested he thought they were. First of all, participant’s questionnaire responses about racial issues and prejudice did not predict their friendliness and were not related to the implicit attitude test. But you guessed it – the implicit attitude test did predict behaviour. Those with higher unconscious negative attitudes were far less friendly towards the black guy. This study was a landmark as not only did it show that we can possess unknown feelings towards people or things, but it also showed that these unconscious attitudes can drive our behaviour. And to hammer home the point, as the word ‘unconscious’ suggests - we are none the wiser.

But how can we understand this hidden mind? Expert in the study of self knowledge Professor Tim Wilson suggests that if we are to better understand the seemingly hidden parts of our minds we should become very interested in our own behaviour. For example, if you find that you haven’t seen your grandmother in over a year and spend very little on her Christmas presents it may be because you don’t much like her company. You just don’t realise. It may be that over the years you have found her deafness, boring anecdotes and general smell more and more unpleasant. And although society teaches us that we should visit family as it is ‘normal’, it isn’t always the most desirable thing to do. When confronted with the opinion that you don’t much like your grandmother you are adamant it isn’t the case. But you may well be kidding yourself. You may possess a negative implicit attitude and not be fully aware of it yet. But when you think about it more – do you really like sweet old grandma that much?

Thus, looking at our own behaviour and questioning whether the explanations we assign to our actions are fully accurate may help us become more self aware. But don’t worry too much! You can still have some confidence that you like your girlfriend as unconscious and conscious attitudes will often match up. It’s the fact that they sometimes might not which should keep us on our guard.

A final hypothetical example that will pull on the heart strings. Relationships: Fiona could have negative unconscious feelings towards ‘love’ due to a childhood in a broken home in which she regularly witnessed people supposedly ‘in love’ being hurt. Because of this she continues to make mountains out of molehills and convinces herself early on that Adam Grafton is wrong for her when in fact he is very right for her. But Fiona doesn’t know and isn’t the type to think too much about life. Her friends may have witnessed the same pattern with every other bloke and ‘get it’ as they are viewers from the outside. Poor Fiona isn’t though and continues to make the same mistakes over and over again from the inside.

And The Point Is What?

-Try and watch your own behaviour every now and again as you might see something interesting.

-If you know a Fiona then be a good friend and tell her what you think.

-Avoid girls like Fiona, they are a nightmare.

-If you always plan to do something but never quite get round to it be honest with yourself. Is it really that things keep cropping up or is it because you don’t much like them?!

It Was the Best of Times - or at least I remember it to have been ...

How good was that family holiday?
Can you remember what you had for lunch this day last week? How about yesterday? Chances are you answered no to the first question and struggled with the second. This exercise is a good reminder of how questionable human memory can be (terrible pun there, but at least its out of the way now). Yet, forgetting what I had for lunch yesterday probably isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. Forgetting about that baked potato isn’t the end of the world. However, there are many other instances in which inaccurate, distorted and biased memories could be very important in the scheme of things.

When strolling around the world and deciding what will and won’t be enjoyable in the future we are almost completely dependent on our memories. For example, when deciding whether to order a baked potato we don’t consult a notebook with scores for every previous baked potatoes we have eaten (it would be time consuming and just a bit weird). We instead rely on how enjoyable we remember eating a baked potato to be. But what if our memory for our enjoyment of baked potatoes isn’t accurate? We may end up making the same error in food choice over and over again. This blog will discuss how such hypothetical memory errors may be quite common and can therefore have significant influence on what we choose to do with our lives.

Take a study by Wirtz et al (2005). Prior to spring break (an American academic holiday that you only ever hear about in films) researchers recruited university students. Two weeks prior to their break participants popped into the laboratory and predicted how much they thought they'd enjoy their holiday. During their holiday participants were provided with tiny hand-held computers and at random intervals (signalled by a beep) would be asked to rate how happy, sad and satisfied they were with the holiday at that moment. After a couple of weeks of holidaying, beeping and rating participants then returned to the laboratory and recalled and rated how much they had enjoyed their holiday. The researchers then used their hand held computers to average each participants online ratings to produce a score for their overall holiday enjoyment.

As you might expect participants memory for their overall holiday enjoyment wasn’t very accurate. Their memories were ‘rose tinted’, tending to remember the overall experience as being more positive than it actually was. One explanation for these results is a tendency to remember and rely upon the stand out parts of events (we unknowingly rely on the good parts of the holiday as they’re more memorable). What is even more interesting is that when asked how likely they would be to repeat the holiday, analysis revealed that they based this upon their rose tinted memories rather than the actual online experience. So this study shows that not only do we misremember (which is worrying enough), but we then use this information to shape our future. Think back: were the dreaded suitcase weigh in (please god don’t let it be 20.1kg), plane delay, hangovers, arguments and 12 o’clock room kick out really worth it?

Another memory error is known as the ‘end effect bias’. This being a bias to give a disproportionately large weighting to the end parts of an experience when recalling how enjoyable the overall experience was. This effect has been replicated in numerous studies. For example; listening to a piece of music with a very enjoyable segment at the end of the experience results in a far more positive memory of the music overall, compared to placing that segment at the start or middle. At first glances this doesn’t seem all that important. But it really is. A poor first 12 days in Menorca ended with 2 exceptional days makes another wise substandard holiday appear to be something it wasn’t. It might not even be too far fetched to suggest that DVD sales for films with outstanding endings such as Atonement, Fight Club and The Sixth Sense may have profited from this unobvious memory bias.

End effects can even have rather large ramifications in the medical world too. Take a study by Kahneman et al. (2003). The researchers were interested in further examining end effects and whether or not they could manipulate and distort participant memories. Colonoscopy – this is a very painful medical procedure involving a tube, camera and your anus. Enough said. Working with a massive group of patients that were due to undergo this procedure the researchers split their participants into two groups. The first group had the usual procedure. The second group had exactly the same procedure except for a twist: the surgeon left the tip of the tube in for an additional 10 seconds. This extra 10 seconds was slightly less painful than the rest of the procedure (it was only the tip). However, participants still experienced an extra 10 seconds of moderate discomfort!

To the results – due to this end effect bias patients with the slightly less painful ending (but actual longer experience of pain) remembered the procedure to have been significantly less painful than the normal patients. As well as ranking the procedure as less painful compared to several other aversive experiences they’d had before. And it gets even better: patients in the second group were also far more likely to return for repeat a colonoscopy several months later. Thus, as memory plays a pivotal role in driving behaviour we should be aware that it can be prone to inaccuracies and biases.


A serious and not so serious applications and a question

-When recalling how good something was ensure you weight up the good and the bad as well as the less obvious and sometimes boring parts of the experience. To avoid ignorance they should all count.

-Don’t worry too much about the first ¾’s and leave your most engaging anecdotes till last when on a date. It could be the difference between scenario 1 and scenario 2.

Scenario 1 – A second date.
Scenario 2 -Checking your phone every 5 minutes and getting by on extremely wishful thinking that your phones text message receiver is broken.