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Knowing the dinner duration with disliked in-laws makes it worse!

People assume that knowing the duration of a pleasant event will ‘kill the fun’, whereas knowing the duration of an unpleasant event makes it tolerable.

Washington: People assume that knowing the duration of a pleasant event will ‘kill the fun’, whereas knowing the duration of an unpleasant event makes it tolerable.
However, a new study has contradicted this notion. Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that knowing how long a good experience will last makes it better, but being aware of the duration of an unpleasant event makes it worse. "Which is more enjoyable, knowing the exact duration of a dinner with a charming friend or not knowing it? What if the dinner is with disliked in-laws?" ask Min Zhao and Claire I. Tsai. They explain that "rather than weakening affective episodes over time, duration knowledge actually intensifies them, rendering a positive experience more pleasurable and a negative experience more aversive." Researchers conducted an experiment on a group of students, half of whom were told the duration of a lecture and the other half was kept uninformed. It emerged that whereas students predicted that duration knowledge would improve their negative experience, in fact it rendered the experience worse." ANI