when volunteers were later asked to remember their experience and say which trial had been more painful, they tended to say that the short trial had been more painful than the long one. Although the long trial required the volunteers to endure 50 percent more seconds of immersion in ice water, it had a slightly warmer finish and hence was remembered as the less painful of the two experiences. Memory’s fetish for endings explains why women often remember childbirth as less painful than it actually was