One Bias We All Have & How It Shapes Our Memory

Peak End Bias (Comedy Mindhacks #7)

We humans are lazy. As a result, we try to simplify as much as possible. Take language, for example. We English speakers once asked this question, “What is happening?” Evidently, that requires too much effort on our behalf. So we trimmed the fat a bit to get “What’s happening?” That was still too big of an ask, so we shortened it to “What’s happenin’?” Still too long, so next came “What’s hap’nin’?” Then “What’s da haps?” That became “What’s up?” Unsatisfied, we had to get it to one syllable: “S’up?” Perhaps the next instantiation will just be “S.” (Okay, I’m being anecdotal. I can’t PROVE that this is how it worked but it might’ve gone this way.)

My point stands: we love being lazy. Our brains love simplifying complex things. Our brains love reduction because it is easy. We do this with virtually everything, especially events that happen in our lives. This is why, for instance, we will remember the day we had a car wreck and, as far as that day goes, we will only recall that one event. We boil it down. We will remember the birth of a child on a specific day but nothing else. The same goes with a wedding: we remember saying our vows or cutting the cake but not much else, like our spouse’s name. We call this reduction. Or, we could go a bit more scientific and call it Peak End Bias.

Peak End Bias, as a theory, claims that we encode our experiences in memory by their highest highs or their lowest lows, their peaks, and we tend to forget everything else. That means, as a comedian, no matter how many decent laughs I might get in a set, each person in the audience will likely only remember what they found the worst, a low peak, or the best, a high peak. That also means that on a night where multiple comedians perform, if you do the best or the worst, they will likely remember you but not anyone else. (So maybe bombing is not entirely bad if at least you’re memorable!)

There is an old adage in comedy that goes like this: start with your second best joke and end with your best joke, everything else goes in between. On the surface it sounds counterintuitive. You might think you should lead with your absolute best to grab them; yet, the strategy fits Peak End Bias like a glove. Opening with your second best joke sets a high water mark that feels strong without exhausting your top resource too soon. It lets you build trust and momentum before settling into the bulk of your material. Then, by holding your best joke until the very end, you ensure the finale is the single moment your audience takes with them.

Everything in between your opener and your closer becomes filler only in the memory sense, but in practice and hopefully in reality, those mid-set moments are where you generate tiny peaks that sustain attention. Maybe you can think of them as micro excitements or brief sparks that prime the brain for the final high. This mindhack, by the way, translates easily from stand-up to teaching, preaching, lecturing, or any public speaking.

If you start a lesson with your second most compelling insight you hook people without revealing the grand takeaway too soon. Then you fill the body of your talk with supporting points and stories, and you close with your most powerful illustration or challenge so that your listeners leave remembering precisely what mattered most. In every case your opening and closing become the two anchor memories that define how your entire message is judged.

As a comedian, this is why it’s important to try to gauge or measure the strength of each joke. You can really only find that out by a) doing shows and paying close attention, and b) watching those shows back to make sure you get it right. You should then pick out the two that consistently earn the biggest reactions and slot the second best at the top and the first best at the close. Everything else fills the space between.

This is a tough process but editing always is. And sometimes it can mean that your set will feel disjointed because you have to rearrange it. But that’s all part of it. You have to figure out what works and keeping Peak End Bias in mind when doing so helps ensure that you are not guessing where your peaks are. In the long run, it also frees you to focus on crafting strong transitions to carry your audiences along. Put differently, by deliberately engineering the bookends of your performance, like a good author using the rhetorical device of inclusio, you can take advantage of Peak End Bias to make sure you, and perhaps what you say last, are memorable. And that’s s’up!