The Peak-End Rule — Cognitive Bias Review Part VI

This post is the sixth part of a series of business-friendly posts, looking at cognitive biases and how they impact our ability to communicate effectively.

What is it?

The tendency for people to judge an experience based on how they felt at its peak, or at the end, rather than base their judgment on an average of every moment of the experience. It’s possible that “net-unpleasantness” (or for that matter net-pleasantness) may be completely disregarded.

Why it occurs:

There are two reasons why this might be the case: Humans have a memory-bias for more emotional events and therefore remember more intensely-emotional events than non. In addition, we have a well established recency-bias, whereby we remember the last part of an experience more clearly than the start or middle.

Where might you see it occur in real life?

It’s often all about the ending. Companies work hard to ensure that your final experience with them in a given situation is a good one. If you have ever had a bad experience with a company only to have it fixed expertly by a customer-service representative at the end, you’ll know that this can leave a lasting good impression. Likewise, retail outlets try to ensure you leave happy by having friendly staff at the till, or a doorman to open the door for you, so you experience the peak-end effect and have an overall positive opinion of the shop going forward (despite what your experience in the middle of the shopping trip was like).

Why is it important?

In general, people will put aside negative feelings about an event or experience if it all ends well and they leave on a high note. In addition, peaks of experience stick out in our memory, rather than more average experiences of the same situations.

What is the impact when communicating a message?

When communicating a message, particularly when you are trying to change behaviour in some way (for example, pitching a new idea to your team or to a customer), remember that people remember high-points of experience, not the average.

This can be applied in numerous ways. By way of example, don’t waste time giving example after example after example throughout your pitch — pick the best and most relevant case and make it as powerful as you can — with the aim being to make that single positive experience as memorable as possible.

Then, remember that your audience is more likely to remember your ending, so make sure you take advantage of this fact if you want to motivate action in some way. Pay considerable attention to your ending and ensure you end on a high note that is beneficial to you as it will be remembered. What part of your message is likely to be the key to your audience changing their behaviour? Alternatively, what part of your message is going to leave your audience most impressed? If it is at all possible, consider closing with either of these points.

If you want to know more please feel free to connect or check out a collection of cognitive biases here. Next up we will take a look at the Authority Bias.