Psychological research has shown that experiential purchases (a hike in the woods, a trip to Rome) bring more happiness than material purchases (a designer shirt, a flat-screen television). The research presented in this article investigates one cause and consequence of this difference: People talk more about their experiences than their possessions and derive more value from doing so. A series of eight studies demonstrate that taking away the ability to talk about experiences (but not material goods) would diminish the enjoyment they bring; that people believe they derive more happiness from talking about experiential purchases; that when given a choice about which of their purchases to talk about, people are more likely to talk about experiential rather than material consumption; and that people report being more inclined to talk about their experiences than their material purchases and derive more hedonic benefits as a result—both in prospect and in retrospect.
BartlettF. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. London, England: Cambridge University Press.
2.
BelkR. W. (1985). Materialism: Trait aspects of living in the material world. Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 265-280.
3.
BraunK. A.EllisR.LoftusE. F. (2002). Make my memory: How advertising can change our memories of the past. Psychology & Marketing, 19, 1-23.
4.
BrickmanP.CoatesD.Janoff-BulmanR. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2, 173-179.
5.
BrunerJ. (2003). Making stories: Law, literature, life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
CaprarielloP. A.ReisH. T. (2013). To do or to have, or to share? Valuing experiences over material possessions depends on the involvement of others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 199-215.
7.
CarterT. J.GilovichT. (2010). The relative relativity of experiential and material purchases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 146-159.
8.
CarterT. J.GilovichT. (2012). I am what I do, not what I have: The centrality of experiential purchases to the self-concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 1304-1317.
9.
DienerE.SeligmanM. E. P. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(3), 81-84.
10.
DienerE.SeligmanM. E. P. (2004). Beyond money: Toward an economy of well being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 1-31.
11.
DunnE. W.AkninL. B.NortonM. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319, 1687-1688.
12.
DunningD. (2005). Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
13.
FrederickS.LoewensteinG. (1999). Hedonic adaptation. In KahnemanD.DienerE.SchwarzN. (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 302-329). New York, NY: Russell Sage.
14.
GableS. L.ReisH. T.ImpettE. A.AsherE. R. (2004). What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 228-245.
15.
GilovichT.KumarA. (2015). We’ll always have Paris: The hedonic payoff from experiential and material investments. In ZannaM.OlsonJ. (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 51, pp. 147-187). New York, NY: Elsevier.
16.
GilovichT.KumarA.JampolL. (2015a). A wonderful life: Experiential consumption and the pursuit of happiness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 152-165.
17.
GilovichT.KumarA.JampolL. (2015b). The beach, the bikini, and the best buy: Replies to Dunn and Weidman, and to Schmitt, Brakus, and Zarantonello. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 179-184.
18.
HowellR. T.HillG. (2009). The mediators of experiential purchases: Determining the impact of psychological needs satisfaction and social comparison. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4, 511-522.
19.
KahnemanD. (2000). Experienced utility and objective happiness. In KahnemanD.TverskyA. (Eds.), Choices, values and frames (pp. 673-692). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
20.
KashdanT. B.BreenW. E. (2007). Materialism and diminished well-being: Experiential avoidance as a mediating mechanism. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26, 521-539.
21.
KasserT.RyanR. M. (1993). A dark side of the American Dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 410-422.
22.
KumarA.GilovichT. (2015). Storytelling enhances experiential consumption. Manuscript in preparation.
23.
KumarA.GilovichT. (in press). To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases. Journal of Consumer Psychology.
24.
KumarA.KillingsworthM. A.GilovichT. (2014). Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases. Psychological Science, 25, 1924-1931.
25.
KumarA.MannT. C.GilovichT. (2015). The aptly buried “I” in experience: Experiential purchases foster social connection. Manuscript submitted for publication.
26.
LambertN.GwinnA.BaumeisterR.StrachmanA.WashburnI.GableS.FinchamF. (2012). A boost of positive affect: The perks of sharing positive experiences. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30, 24-43.
27.
LangstonC. A. (1994). Capitalizing on and coping with daily-life events: Expressive responses to positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 1112-1125.
28.
McAdamsD. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5, 100-122.
29.
MitchellT. R.ThompsonL.PetersonE.CronkR. (1997). Temporal adjustments in the evaluation of events: The “rosy view.”Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 421-488.
30.
MooreS. G. (2012). Some things are better left unsaid: How word of mouth influences the storyteller. Journal of Consumer Research, 38, 1140-1154.
31.
MyersD. G. (2000). The funds, friends, and faith of happy people. American Psychologist, 55, 56-67.
32.
MyersD. G.DienerE. (1995). Who is happy?Psychological Science, 6, 10-19.
33.
NicolaoL.IrwinJ. R.GoodmanJ. K. (2009). Happiness for sale: Do experiential purchases make consumers happier than material purchases?Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 188-198.
34.
PchelinP.HowellR. T. (2014). The hidden cost of value-seeing: People do not accurately forecast the economic benefits of experiential purchases. Journal of Positive Psychology, 9, 322-334.
35.
PennebakerJ. W. (1990). Opening up: The healing power of confiding in others. New York, NY: Morrow.
36.
PetitJ. W.KlineJ. P.GencozT.GencozF.JoinerT. E. (2001). Are happy people healthier? The specific role of positive affect in predicting self-reported health symptoms. Journal of Research in Personality, 35, 521-536.
37.
RichinsM. L.DawsonS. (1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 303-316.
38.
RosenzweigE.GilovichT. (2012). Buyer’s remorse or missed opportunity: Differential regrets for material and experiential purchases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 215-223.
39.
SuttonR. I. (1992). Feelings about a Disneyland visit: Photographs and reconstruction of bygone emotions. Journal of Management Inquiry, 1, 278-287.
40.
TaylorS. E.BrownJ. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
41.
TverskyB. (2004). Narratives of space, time, and life. Mind and Language, 19, 380-392.
42.
Van BovenL.CampbellM. C.GilovichT. (2010). Stigmatizing materialism: On stereotypes and impressions of materialistic and experiential pursuits. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 551-563.
43.
Van BovenL.GilovichT. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1193-1202.
44.
WilsonT. D.GilbertD. T. (2008). Explaining away: A model of affective adaptation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 370-386.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
