Video 1: Experience vs Memory

Now, I'd like to start with an example of somebody who had a question-and-answer session after one of my lectures reported a story, and that was a story --

He said he'd been listening to a symphony,

and it was absolutely glorious music and at the very end of the recording, there was a dreadful screeching sound.

And then he added, really quite emotionally, it ruined the whole experience.

But it hadn't.

What it had ruined were the memories of the experience. He had had the experience. He had had 20 minutes of glorious music.

They counted for nothing because he was left with a memory; the memory was ruined, and the memory was all that he had gotten to keep.

What this is telling us, really, is that we might be thinking of ourselves and of other people in terms of two selves.

There is an experiencing self, who lives in the present

and knows the present, is capable of re-living the past, but basically it has only the present.

It's the experiencing self that the doctor approaches -- you know, when the doctor asks, "Does it hurt now when I touch you here?"

And then there is a remembering self,

and the remembering self is the one that keeps score, and maintains the story of our life,

and it's the one that the doctor approaches in asking the question,

"How have you been feeling lately?" or "How was your trip to Albania?" or something like that.

Those are two very different entities, the experiencing self and the remembering self, and getting confused between them is part of the mess about the notion of happiness.

Questions

Why does Kahneman provided the samples of a doctor asking questions?

>to show the difference between the experiencing and remembering self.

Why does Kahneman share the story about the man listening to music? to highlight the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self

Which of the following is correct about experiencing self? 

>It lives largely in the present.

The notion of happiness means...

>the idea or concept of happiness. 

If something is dreadful, it is awful or unpleasant.

Those are two very different entities, the experiencing self and the remembering self, and getting confused between them is part of the mess about the notion of happiness.

Now, the remembering self is a storyteller. 

And that really starts with a basic response of our memories -- it starts immediately. We don't only tell stories when we set out to tell stories. 

Our memory tells us stories, that is, what we get to keep from our experiences is a story. 

And let me begin with one example. 

This is an old study. Those are actual patients undergoing a painful procedure. I won't go into detail. 

It's no longer painful these days, but it was painful when this study was run in the 1990s. 

They were asked to report on their pain every 60 seconds. 

Here are two patients, those are their recordings. 

And you are asked, "Who of them suffered more?" And it's a very easy question. Clearly, Patient B suffered more -- 

his colonoscopy was longer, and every minute of pain that Patient A had, Patient B had, and more.

But now there is another question: "How much did these patients think they suffered?" And here is a surprise. 

The surprise is that Patient A had a much worse memory of the colonoscopy than Patient B. 

The stories of the colonoscopies were different, and because a very critical part of the story is how it ends. 

And neither of these stories is very inspiring or great -- but one of them is this distinct ... (Laughter) 

but one of them is distinctly worse than the other. 

And the one that is worse is the one where pain was at its peak at the very end; 

it's a bad story. How do we know that? 

Because we asked these people after their colonoscopy, and much later, too, "How bad was the whole thing, in total?" 

And it was much worse for A than for B, in memory.

Now this is a direct conflict between the experiencing self and the remembering self. 

From the point of view of the experiencing self, clearly, B had a worse time. 

Now, what you could do with Patient A, and we actually ran clinical experiments, and it has been done, and it does work -- 

you could actually extend the colonoscopy of Patient A by just keeping the tube in without jiggling it too much. 

That will cause the patient to suffer, but just a little and much less than before. 

And if you do that for a couple of minutes, you have made the experiencing self of Patient A worse off, and you have the remembering self of Patient A a lot better off, 

because now you have endowed Patient A with a better story about his experience. 

What defines a story? And that is true of the stories that memory delivers for us, and it's also true of the stories that we make up. 

What defines a story are changes, significant moments and endings. 

Endings are very, very important and, in this case, the ending dominated.

Questions

What is suprising about this study?

>Patient B had a better memory of the procedure than patient A, despite suffering mre. 

What influence the patients' memories of procedure in the study? 

>the amount of pain at the end.

What two variable did the study compare?

>patients' perception of pain during and after the procedure.

What lesson can be taken away from this study?

>people's memory of happiness is not necessarily reflective of reality.

It's no longer painful these days, but it was painful when this study was run in the 1990s. 

The one that is worse is the one where pain was at its peak at the end.