Our minds have a unique way of remembering experiences, and it involves two memory selves, each with its own perspective. The first one is the experiencing self, which focuses on how we feel in the present moment and asks, “How does it feel now?” This self provides a more accurate account of what’s happening because it captures our real-time emotions during an experience. The second self is the remembering self, which records the overall perception of an event after it has ended, asking, “How was it on the whole?” This self is less accurate because it relies on memories formed after the situation is finished, and it tends to dominate our memory.

Two key reasons explain why the remembering self dominates our memory. The first is duration neglect, where we tend to overlook the total duration of an event and focus on specific memories. The second reason is the peak-end rule, which means we tend to place a disproportionate emphasis on what occurs at the end of an event when forming memories.

An experiment involving painful colonoscopies illustrates this dominance of the remembering self. Patients were divided into two groups: one group endured longer but less painful procedures, while the other group had shorter procedures with increasing pain towards the end. While the experiencing self reported more pain for the longer procedures during the process, the remembering self, taking over after the experience, remembered the shorter but more painful ending as the worst. This experiment demonstrates how our memories can be influenced by duration neglect, the peak-end rule, and the sometimes faulty nature of our recollections.