It’s about a happiness study, but it may be one of the better examples:
The gist is that people remember the end of an uncomfortable experience more than the time in between and map that feeling of a “happy end” onto the whole experience in retrospect. In one study two groups of subjects got a colonoscopy. Both groups were in considerable discomfort for equal amounts of time, when in group 1 the colonoscopy was terminated, while for group 2 the instrument wasn’t removed immediately and thus caused considerably less discomfort as during the treatment, but obviously still more discomfort than in the group where it was removed entirely. When both groups were asked to evaluate their experience afterwards, the group which suffered discomfort for longer (but where the discomfort was curtailed down somewhat at the end) didn’t think the experience was as bad, as the control group which suffered less on all accounts in comparison.
Another problem with taking the study as an example may be, that it may feel almost too much like a set trap. If we didn’t know the results, upon hearing the study setup we would think: “Well duh, of course the patients with less overall discomfort will report that they had a better experience” but that seems to be such an obviously and intuitively trivial conclusion that I’d get suspicious immediately if I encountered that example.
EDIT: By the way, are you planning to include a rough outline of evolutionary theory or include evolution in some other fashion Eliezer?
It’s about a happiness study, but it may be one of the better examples:
The gist is that people remember the end of an uncomfortable experience more than the time in between and map that feeling of a “happy end” onto the whole experience in retrospect. In one study two groups of subjects got a colonoscopy. Both groups were in considerable discomfort for equal amounts of time, when in group 1 the colonoscopy was terminated, while for group 2 the instrument wasn’t removed immediately and thus caused considerably less discomfort as during the treatment, but obviously still more discomfort than in the group where it was removed entirely. When both groups were asked to evaluate their experience afterwards, the group which suffered discomfort for longer (but where the discomfort was curtailed down somewhat at the end) didn’t think the experience was as bad, as the control group which suffered less on all accounts in comparison.
Unfortunately it may be a somewhat known finding by now, considering that you can find it in a TED-talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html
Another problem with taking the study as an example may be, that it may feel almost too much like a set trap. If we didn’t know the results, upon hearing the study setup we would think: “Well duh, of course the patients with less overall discomfort will report that they had a better experience” but that seems to be such an obviously and intuitively trivial conclusion that I’d get suspicious immediately if I encountered that example.
EDIT: By the way, are you planning to include a rough outline of evolutionary theory or include evolution in some other fashion Eliezer?