Believe it or not, researchers have shown that buying items can make you happy. From sweaters to skateboards, material purchases provide more frequent happiness over time. On the contrarian side, buying experiences, like a trip to the zoo, provide more intense happiness on individual occasions.
For those who like to shop, there’s good news: buying gifts can bring happiness.
The majority of previous studies examining material and experiential purchases and happiness focused on what people anticipated about shopping or remembered about items and experiences. The University of British Columbia’s Aaron Weidman and Elizabeth Dunn wanted to know how people felt in the moment, say the first weeks with a new sweater or tablet computer. To answer this question, they assessed the real-time, momentary happiness people got from material and experiential purchases, up to five times per day for two weeks. Buying items such as portable speakers, or coffee makers, and examples of experiential purchases were a weekend desert safari, 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 buying items and experiences purchases bring happiness in two distinct flavors. Material purchases bring repeated doses of happiness over time in the weeks after they are bought, whereas experiences offer a more intense but fleeting dose of happiness. Additionally, when people looked back on their purchases 6 weeks after Christmas, they felt more satisfaction about experiential purchases.
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The decision of whether to buy a material thing or a life experience may therefore boil down to what kind of happiness one desires. For example, consider a holiday shopper deciding between tickets to a concert or a new couch in the living room. The concert will provide an intense thrill for one spectacular night, but then it will end, and will no longer provide momentary happiness, aside from being a happy memory. In contrast, the new couch will never provide a thrilling moment to match the concert, but will keep the owner snug and comfortable each day throughout the winter months.
As you go forth in your holiday shopping this season, either for yourself or others, think about what form of happiness you want, before making a purchase.
