Memory forms the input for future behavior. Therefore, how individuals
remember
a certain experience may be just as important as the experience itself. The peak-and-end-rule (PE-rule) postulates that remembered experiences are best predicted by the peak emotional valence and the emotional valence at the end of an experience in the here and now. The PE-rule, however, has mostly been assessed in experimental paradigms that induce relatively simple, one-dimensional experiences (e.g., experienced pain in a clinical setting). This hampers generalizations of the PE-rule to the experiences in everyday life. This paper evaluates the generalizability of the PE-rule to more complex and heterogeneous experiences by examining the PE-rule in a virtual reality (VR) experience, as VR combines improved ecological validity with rigorous experimental control. Findings indicate that for more complex and heterogeneous experiences, peak and end emotional valence are inferior to other measures (such as averaged valence and arousal ratings over the entire experiential episode) in predicting remembered experience. These findings suggest that the PE-rule cannot be generalized to ecologically more valid experiential episodes.
Recent developments in communication technology have increased the possibilities considerably to make LBA an everyday practice (Dhar and Varshney, 2011). Within a short timeframe we have experienced a transition from simple mobile devices, suitable for telephony and SMS, to so-called smartphones equipped with powerful processors, a rich software platform, intuitive and multi-modal user interface, advanced sensors, high-speed internet
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