![]() ![]() To examine this phenomenon, we invited 27 volunteers to take part in a virtual gambling experiment. Fixating on the happy end only maximises our final impression, not our overall enjoyment. The core of the problem is a difference between what we enjoy while it lasts and what we want again after the final impression. And this obsession with things getting better and better all the time is a Banker’s Fallacy – focusing on short-term growth at the expense of long-term outcome. However, this is exactly how some people feel about past experiences. Would one rainy day ruin your holiday? Juergen Faelchle/Shutterstock A long holiday with brilliant weather except for the last day is not worse overall than a much shorter holiday with good weather throughout. But enjoyment that has already been had should not be discounted because of a disappointing end. When Dumbledore died at the end of the Harry Potter film, some people might have felt that their whole experience was ruined. Most of us enjoy it when our pleasant experiences are as long as possible, but at the same time we want things to end well. ![]() A happy ending may be brief and come after a long period of mediocrity. However focusing on happy endings can make us neglect what happened along the way. In fact, one of the numerous foibles that prompt us to make poor decisions is an unwarranted preference for happy endings.Ī happy ending means things got better as the experience unfolded. For example, if you play five rounds of poker you get more overall enjoyment from winning twice in the middle than once at the end – but we don’t always realise this. We have just busted the old myth in a recent brain imaging experiment, published in the Journal of Neuroscience.Įxperiences that end well are not necessarily good overall and experiences that end less well are not necessarily all that bad. The words may still seem to ring true today, but turns out they don’t. In the case of the Burgtheater, these problems came to an end in 1821, when it was once again returned to Court administration the Kärntnertortheater continued to be leased out.“All’s well that ends well”, wrote William Shakespeare over 400 years ago. The theatres were leased and once again the entrepreneurs that ran them struggled with financial difficulties. Joseph II wrote to his brother Leopold: ‘German comedy with Madame Sacco continues to delight the Viennese, and I enjoy the fruits therefrom, as the box office now shows profits instead of a loss.’ĭespite financial success, additional attempts were made to boost receipts by opening a casino in the same building.Īfter the death of Joseph II in 1790 his theatre reforms, like so many of his other innovations, were revoked. Productions starring the popular actress Johanna Sacco were box office hits. In the genre of comedy, ever the preferred theatrical fare of the Viennese, Austrian authors were at the fore. These re-workings even included the figure of Hanswurst, whose crude wit was enduringly popular with Viennese audiences. Only a few works, for example by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, were staged and then only in adaptations that were rarely true to the original. There is no record of what contemporary audiences thought about this.Ĭontemporary German classics were not performed in Vienna for some time. Plays such as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet thus had to undergo radical alterations. The Emperor issued a formal instruction that they were to be given happy conclusions known as ‘Viennese endings’ and were not to contain sad scenes (funerals, deaths, and so on) in order to avoid depressing audiences. For the first time Shakespeare’s plays were performed in German, albeit in adaptations written specially for the Viennese stage that were often very different from and somewhat disrespectful to the originals. ![]() As a result of the reforms introduced by Joseph II the Burgtheater rose to become the most highly-regarded theatre in the German-speaking countries. ![]()
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