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Adam Mastroianni's avatar

I agree. It's not clear to me how you could reasonably answer a question like, "Which makes you happier, things or experiences?"

Buying my toothbrush didn't make me particularly happy. But if it fell in the toilet, should I say, "Too bad I can't buy a new one, because to maximize my happiness I should really put that $1.50 toward buying Coldplay tickets"?

In fact, I bet people overestimate their momentary happiness more when predicting for experiences than for possessions. There's research on how people expect fun experiences (like a European vacation) to be great, they remember them being great, but when they're actually experiencing them, they're less great: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103197913330

That's because when you imagine going to Rome, you picture yourself sucking down Negronis and strolling through the Coliseum. You don't picture yourself waiting in line, or getting dehydrated, or tossing and turning while sirens wail outside your AirBnB. All those things fade in memory, both because negative things fade faster than positive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fading_affect_bias), and because you had a strong theory in the first place that "European vacation = fun", and things that don't fit with that theory tend to get lost.

I bet this happens less with possessions. I buy a TV in the hopes of watching entertaining images on it, and that's exactly what I end up doing. I never expect buying a new thing to make me transcendently happy, but I do expect experiences to do that for me sometimes, and I'm often disappointed.

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Maria Made in Cosmos ✨'s avatar

I used to chase experiences and look down on the normies who only buy stuff, until I had a baby and realized our home environment is literally her entire life and a baseline of normal. In the past I didn't care about cooking at home or having nice plates as long as I could go to restaurants. Now buying fine things allows me to *create* experiences instead of merely consuming them. Only buying experiences without ever creating any is still consumerism.

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