The data falsifies the common intuition that people will prefer short, high intensity pain.

It's unfortunate that Ariely doesn't go into more detail on the results he's relying here, but it sounds similar to the evidence for the peak-end effect, duration neglect, etc. The difference of course, is that the latter are generally considered to be cognitive biases in how we remember pain, rather than a reflection of its 'true' badness, which is how Ariely is selling it.

Anybody have a better idea whether this is different interpretations of the same research, or different research altogether?