Duration Neglect
Peak-End Rule
The psychological observation that people's judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Such judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak (when the experience was the most painful), and how quickly the pain diminishes.
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Origin
Introduced by the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and David Schkade in a 1998 paper. Kahneman and Schkade found that people tended to remember experiences based on their peak intensity and the way they ended, rather than their duration. They argued that duration neglect could lead to suboptimal decision-making and that people should be aware of the bias when making choices that involve experiences of different durations. The concept of duration neglect has since become a recognized concept in psychology and decision-making and has been used to describe the role of time in shaping human experience and memory.