Same event, five people

A friend forgot our plans

A friend forgot your plans and never showed up. Imagine the same thing happening to five people. The left edge is that moment, and time moves on as you go right. The height of each curve is how hurt that person feels. Same event, yet the five waves all have a different height and a different length.

Why?How big a feeling gets is not decided by the event alone. The person’s inborn nature, how their body is doing that day, what they have been through before, and how they read the event all play a part. This story looks at each of those, one at a time.

Go furtherThe bottom axis is not evenly spaced. Each step to the right stretches time by tens of times, so a few seconds and a few days fit on one screen. The five people are made up, and the curves are an illustrative model of the differences research describes.