When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing(66)

12. Szu-Chi Huang and Ying Zhang, “All Roads Lead to Rome: The Impact of Multiple Attainment Means on Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104, no. 2 (2013): 236–48.

13. Teresa M. Amabile, William DeJong, and Mark R. Lepper, “Effects of Externally Imposed Deadlines on Subsequent Intrinsic Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34, no. 1 (1976): 92–98; Teresa M. Amabile, “The Social Psychology of Creativity: A Componential Conceptualization,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45, no. 2 (1983): 357–77; Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior,” Psychological Inquiry 11, no. 4 (2000): 227–68.

14. See, e.g., Marco Pinfari, “Time to Agree: Is Time Pressure Good for Peace Negotiations?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55, no. 5 (2011): 683–709.

15. Ed Diener, Derrick Wirtz, and Shigehiro Oishi, “End Effects of Rated Life Quality: The James Dean Effect,” Psychological Science 12, no. 2 (2001): 124–28.

16. Daniel Kahneman et al., “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End,” Psychological Science 4, no. 6 (1993): 401–405; Barbara L. Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman, “Duration Neglect in Retrospective Evaluations of Affective Episodes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65, no. 1 (1993): 45–55; Charles A. Schreiber and Daniel Kahneman, “Determinants of the Remembered Utility of Aversive Sounds,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 129, no. 1 (2000): 27–42.

17. Donald A. Redelmeier and Daniel Kahneman, “Patients’ Memories of Painful Medical Treatments: Real-Time and Retrospective Evaluations of Two Minimally Invasive Procedures,” Pain 66, no. 1 (1996): 3–8.

18. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 380.

19. George F. Loewenstein and Dra?en Prelec, “Preferences for Sequences of Outcomes,” Psychological Review 100, no. 1 (1993): 91–108; Hans Baumgartner, Mita Sujan, and Dan Padgett, “Patterns of Affective Reactions to Advertisements: The Integration of Moment-to-Moment Responses into Overall Judgments,” Journal of Marketing Research 34, no. 2 (1997): 219–32; Amy M. Do, Alexander V. Rupert, and George Wolford, “Evaluations of Pleasurable Experiences: The Peak-End Rule,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, no. 1 (2008): 96–98.

20. Andrew Healy and Gabriel S. Lenz, “Substituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election-Year Economy,” American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 1 (2014): 31–47; Andrews Healy and Neil Malhotra, “Myopic Voters and Natural Disaster Policy,” American Political Science Review 103, no. 3 (2009): 387–406.

21. George E. Newman, Kristi L. Lockhart, and Frank C. Keil, “‘End-of-Life’ Biases in Moral Evaluations of Others,” Cognition 115, no. 2 (2010): 343–49.

22. Ibid.

23. Tammy English and Laura L. Carstensen, “Selective Narrowing of Social Networks Across Adulthood Is Associated with Improved Emotional Experience in Daily Life,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 38, no. 2 (2014): 195–202.

24. Laura L. Carstensen, Derek M. Isaacowitz, and Susan T. Charles, “Taking Time Seriously: A Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity,” American Psychologist 54, no. 3 (1999): 165–81.

25. Ibid.

26. Other research has produced similar findings. See, e.g., Frieder R. Lang, “Endings and Continuity of Social Relationships: Maximizing Intrinsic Benefits Within Personal Networks When Feeling Near to Death,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 17, no. 2 (2000): 155–82; Cornelia Wrzus et al., “Social Network Changes and Life Events Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 139, no. 1 (2013): 53–80.

27. Laura L. Carstensen, Derek M. Isaacowitz, and Susan T. Charles, “Taking Time Seriously: A Theory of Socioemotional Selectivity,” American Psychologist 54, no. 3 (1999): 165–81.

28. Angela M. Legg and Kate Sweeny, “Do You Want the Good News or the Bad News First? The Nature and Consequences of News Order Preferences,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, no. 3 (2014): 279–88; Linda L. Marshall and Robert F. Kidd, “Good News or Bad News First?” Social Behavior and Personality 9, no. 2 (1981): 223–26.

29. Angela M. Legg and Kate Sweeny, “Do You Want the Good News or the Bad News First? The Nature and Consequences of News Order Preferences,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40, no. 3 (2014): 279–88.

30. See, e.g., William T. Ross, Jr., and Itamar Simonson, “Evaluations of Pairs of Experiences: A Preference for Happy Endings,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 4, no. 4 (1991): 273–82. This preference is not uniformly positive. For example, people at the racetrack tend to bet more on longshots on the last race of the day. They hope to end with a bang but usually just end with emptier pockets. Craig R. M. McKenzie et al., “Are Longshots Only for Losers? A New Look at the Last Race Effect,” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 29, no. 1 (2016): 25–36. See also Martin D. Vestergaard and Wolfram Schultz, “Choice Mechanisms for Past, Temporally Extended Outcomes,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282, no. 1810 (2015): 20141766.

31. Ed O’Brien and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, “Saving the Last for Best: A Positivity Bias for End Experiences,” Psychological Science 23, no. 2 (2012): 163–65.