remember the events, the emotions have dissipated. Notice the delight with which the writer of the email shared her story of the negative experience with me. Yes, the bad things were horrible. But yes, she would go back.

The problems and frustrations of life do not matter nearly as much as you think. What matters is the memory of the events. With positive memories, people go back to a website, store, or amusement park, return to Thailand, and recommend products to their friends.

Consider some simple case studies. I asked people to tell me what they hate most about a wide variety of things. I asked about Apple’s operating system, iPod, i Touch, and iPhone. I asked for the biggest downsides of a Disney theme-park visit or a cruise-ship voyage. I asked about automobiles such as the VW Beetle or the Mini Cooper. In all cases, I had a litany of horror stories. “I hate the lines,” they say about Disney theme parks. “I hate the way Ikea forces me to go through the entire store.” When prompted, people are pretty good at generating a list of dislikes, even hates.

Thailand photographs by Tammy Guy

But then I asked if they would go back, or purchase the item again, or repeat the experience. Would they recommend it to their friends? The answer was a resounding “yes!” Not universally, I hasten to add, but way up there in terms of percentages. High-enough percentages to make executives at these companies smile and nod their heads with satisfaction.

Terence Mitchell and Leigh Thompson identify three different aspects of an experience: “rosy projection,” “dampening,” and “rosy retrospection.” [ 2, 3]

• A snack of fried insects, an unseemly squat toilet, and a monster spider— all regularly encountered in Thailand— represent the triumph of memory over actuality.

 

Rosy projection: “the tendency for people to anticipate events as more favorable and positive than they describe the experience at the time of its occurrence”;

Dampening: “the tendency for people to minimize the favorabil-ity or pleasure of events they are currently experiencing”;

Rosy retrospection: “the tendency for people to remember and recollect events they experience more fondly and positively than they evaluated them to be at the time of their occurrence.”

There is considerable experimental evidence to favor the

concept of these three aspects. Note that we are speaking of events that would normally be seen as positive. For example, Mitchell, Thompson et al., studied a 12-day tour of Europe, students going home for Thanksgiving vacation, and a three-week bicycle tour across California. The results were all similar. Before an event, people look forward with positive anticipation. Afterward, they tend to remember the event fondly. During? Well, reality seldom lives up to expectations, so lots of things go wrong, sometimes

[ 2] Mitchell, T. and L. Thompson. “A Theory of Temporal Adjustments of the Evaluation of Events: Rosy Prospection & Rosy Retrospection.” In Advances in Managerial Cognition and Organizational Information-processing, Vol. 5, edited by C. Stubbart, J. Porac, and J. Meindl, 85-114. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1994.

[ 3] Mitchell, T. R., L. Thompson, E. Peterson, and R. Cronk. “Temporal Adjustments in the Evaluation of Events: The ‘Rosy View.’” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 33, no. 4 (1997): 421-448.