The decision of whether to buy a material
thing or a life experience may therefore boil down to what kind of happiness
one desires
Material purchases, from sweaters to tablet
computers, provide more frequent happiness over time, whereas experiential
purchases, like a trip to the zoo, provide more intense happiness on individual
occasions, says a study.
“The
decision of whether to buy a material thing or a life experience may therefore
boil down to what kind of happiness one desires,” said one of the researchers
Aaron Weidman from University of British Columbia in Canada. The researchers
assessed the real-time, momentary happiness people got from material and
experiential purchases, up to five times per day for two weeks.
Materialpurchases consisted of items such as portable speakers, or coffee makers, and
examples of experiential purchases were a weekend ski trip, tickets to a hockey
game, or spa gift cards. By having people record their thoughts in the weeks
following their purchases, as well as one month after their purchases, the
researchers showed that material and experiential purchases bring happiness intwo distinct flavours.
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2015 Material purchases bring repeated doses of happiness over time in the
weeks after they are bought, whereas experiential purchases offer a more
intense but fleeting dose of happiness. Additionally, when people looked back
on their purchases six weeks after Christmas, they felt more satisfaction about
experiential purchases. The findings appeared in the journal Social
Psychological and Personality Science
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