Duration neglect

Duration neglect is the psychological observation that people's judgments of the unpleasantness of painful experiences depend very little on the duration of those experiences. Multiple experiments have found that these judgments tend to be affected by two factors: the peak (when the experience was the most painful) and how quickly the pain diminishes. If it diminishes more slowly, the experience is judged to be less painful. Hence, the term "peak–end rule" describes this process of evaluation.

Duration neglect is a specific form of the more general extension neglect.

The phenomenon was formally identified by Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman (1993), and applies to both pleasant and unpleasant experiences. It is considered a component of affective forecasting, and has practical implications for medicine, consumer behaviour, and the scientific measurement of human wellbeing.