Why Today Is Better Than the Past?

They had people evaluate the intensity of a variety of experiences and examined how that intensity changed over time. For example, they had people watch a clip of a scary movie. Immediately after watching that clip, they thought it was very scary. About 20 minutes later, they had people watch a second clip. People thought that the second clip was also very scary. Interestingly, if they evaluated the first clip again after viewing the second, they didn't think it was so frightening looking back on it. That is, the intensity of the emotion went down over time. It didn't go up.