Affective Experiences On Subjective Well-Being

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different studies that investigate how we perceive affective experiences and how different individuals then apply the lessons learnt to achieve happiness. All three studies investigate the peak-and-end rule which 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. (Fredrickson, 2000)

Article Summaries

Study 1

Hypothesis

Fredrickson (1991) has investigated how anticipated social endings influence people's social behavior and social judgment. She hypothesized that endings of social relationships provide strong indices of people's judgments and recollections of those relationships.


Method

Subjects:

64 unacquainted college students were paired into 32 same-sex dyads, to converse for a series of ``get acquainted' sessions. This created an atmosphere of short-term relationships in a laboratory setting. (Fredrickson, ...

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P, .05). By contrast, affect experienced during earlier sessions for those in the Ending condition, and all sessions for those in the Ongoing condition accounted for less than 5% of the variance each (all n.s.).

Conclusion

This pattern of results suggests that affect experienced during known endings is weighted heavily in people's global evaluations of social relationships. Importantly, the data rule out the alternative explanation that endings gain prominence simply due to recency: Recent affect carried almost no weight when the relationship was construed as ongoing. (Fredrickson, 1991).


Study 2

Hypothesis

Kahneman and Fredrickson in 1993 tested the truth of ...

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