Increases in the intensity of the stimulus beyond this point increase only the strength of the unpleasantness component. However, the pleasantness component of each stimulus reaches its maximum while the unpleasantness component is still relatively weak. Therefore, the stimulus is perceived as increasingly more pleasant. As the strength of a stimulus increases from barely discernable (i.e., neutral) to weak and then to mild, the strength of its pleasantness component increases much more rapidly than the strength of its unpleasantness component. He theorized that stimulation has both a pleasant and an unpleasant effect. In 1874, Wundt proposed a general law of hedonic tone to explain how humans interpret stimuli. Tinsley, in Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology, 2004 4.3.2 Wundt’s Law of Hedonic Tone At the very least it is clear that temporal order in the hedonic environment bears little resemblance to the abstract time of physics but operates on its own (yet to be formulated) laws. And some events may be anticipated in terms of the memories they will leave-such as vacations. Intriguingly, the desirability or fearfulness of an anticipated event may be based on imagining how one would feel at hearing the news (e.g., that one has just won a lottery or tested HIV-positive) rather than on a realistic appraisal of one’s future state. Such dissociation could result from a general bias to reconstruct memories as pleasant ( Fiske & Taylor, 1984 Matlin & Strang, 1978) social pressures (e.g., one is supposed to enjoy a visit to Disneyland) ( Festinger, 1957 Schlenker, 1980 Sutton, 1989) or the use of selected positively valenced photographs or other mementos as cues ( Chalfen, 1981 Milgram, 1977 Sontag, 1973). In an extreme form, summary judgments of the pleasantness or unpleasantness, and hence desirability, of an event may have no relation at all to the hedonic experience of the event itself-the judgment may be based on memories that have become dissociated from the event.
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This finding was replicated with a painful procedure in a medical setting and is of potential practical importance ( Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1993). Laboratory subjects prefer a longer unpleasant event that terminates gradually (a hand in unpleasantly cold water which is slowly warmed) to a shorter version that ends abruptly ( Kahneman, Fredrickson, Schreiber, & Redelmeier, 1993). Importance of the ending point of an event has paradoxical implications. However, subjects’ evaluations of film clips showed little relation to on-line ratings rather, global judgments of pleasantness appeared a function only of the most extreme point of pleasantness in the film and the ending point ( Fredrickson & Kahneman, 1993). Longer pleasant and aversive events should be rated as more hedonically extreme than shorter events. In a rational model of utility, overall rating of pleasantness for an event should be a summation over time of the ratings of individual parts. Hedonic tone and emotional content of events fluctuate from moment to moment ( Varey & Kahneman, 1992). Eleanor Rosch, in Cognitive Ecology, 1996 2 Summarization of Events and Loss of Temporal Extension