How experience shapes the remembering self

Your experiences form the basic building blocks upon which the remembering self builds your life story. Even though the experiencing self is the one experiencing events, the remembering self may view the events differently. In a famous study, researchers asked subjects to do two activities:

At the end of each activity, the subjects gave a rating from 1-10 on how comfortable they felt. And the researchers repeated this study many times, switching the order of the two activities. It would not be surprising to expect the subjects to rate the second activity as more unpleasant. After all, they dipped their hands in the cold water for longer than in the first activity. However, it turns out that subjects rated the second activity as more pleasant. Even though they suffered for more time, the last 30 seconds were more comfortable. The remembering self did not care about the duration of the pain. It cared about how the activity ended. People seem to remember how good or bad an event was by its peak and end. They care less about what happens at the beginning or the middle. This phenomenon is known as the peak-end rule. The experiencing self and the remembering self judge events differently. The experiencing self goes through life as it truly is every moment. But the remembering self uses that experience to decide how you ultimately view the world.