This appears counterintuitive; people typically predict intense states to last longer. The hypothesized for this disconnect is that, intense states trigger psychological defense processes that reduce the distress, while less intense states do not trigger the same psychological defense processes and, therefore, less effective attenuation of the stress occurs.
I watched the (US) news on November 6th and still haven’t recovered from the shock.
I just…
I dont fucking know anymore…
Already have depression, and this bullshit isn’t helping…
It’s over, there’s no recovery… I’m just waiting for a martial law emergency alert so I can get shot by the military and maybe I’ll have a legacy by being remembered as one of the first ones to get shot…
(sorry for the rambling, I can’t think clearly since that fucked up election result)
…Is the description anything to do with the image?
They’re using walking (region alpha) vs biking (region beta) region as an analogy: “paradoxically” you’ll reach some further distances earlier, based on your choice of mode of transport. Which wouldn’t work in my case cause I’ll take the bike to the grocery store down the street. At any rate, your “choice” of defense mechanism influences your rate of recovery, is what they’re trying to say
The article keeps falling back to the bike example, which totally ignores the time required to equip the bike and lock it up at the destination.
Their other example of a bad romantic relationship is also hung up on switching costs.
I prefer the version “broken gets fixed, shoddy gets ignored”.
Some living situations have time-consuming storage places of bikes, like I can imagine some apartment building with cellars for bikes or shit like that.
But locking your bike at the target place? Takes seconds. Also, I’m relatively sure for most people, retrieving the bike also takes at most a minute.
Now look at the graph. Shift the bike 1.5 minutes upwards, you still get almost exactly the same effect, the bike is still faster for a lot of the 1 mile of walking.
So sure, it’s important to take into account the switching costs, but this concept still holds true most of the time.
