Extracting meaning from past affective experiences: The importance of peaks, ends, and specific emotions

This article reviews existing empirical research on the peak-and-end rule. This rule states that people’s global evaluations of past affective episodes can be well predicted by the affect experienced during just two moments: the moment of peak affect intensity and the ending. One consequence of the peak-and-end rule is that the duration of affective episodes is largely neglected. Evidence supporting the peak-and-end rule is robust, but quali® ed. New directions for future work in this emerging area of study are outlined. In particular, the personal meanings associated with speci® c moments and with speci® c emotions should be assessed. It is hypothesised that moments rich with self-relevant information will dominate people’s global evaluations of past affective episodes. The article concludes with a discussion of ways to measure and optimise objective happiness.