August 30, 2024
4 min read
Buy Experiences instead of Possessions to Build Social Connection
Shared experiences, more than material things, bring people together
The human being is a “social animal,” as Aristotle suggested. We have a fundamental need to belong. Yet we are living in a time when the U.S. Surgeon General has warned about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. A lack of social connection can have negative consequences for both our mental and physical health. How, then, might we encourage the feelings of connectedness that are so integral to our well-being?
Over the past several years, my colleagues and I have conducted scientific studies suggesting that experiential purchases (such as travel, meals at restaurants, outdoor activities and recreation) tend to bring people more happiness than material ones (for instance, clothing, furniture and electronic goods). In recent research, psychologists Thomas Gilovich of Cornell University, Thomas C. Mann then of Harvard University and I investigated another downstream consequence of spending on experiences rather than things: it can promote a greater sense of social connection.
We conducted a series of 13 experiments involving 1,980 participants. Although the specific approach in each study varied, in several of these experiments, we asked people to think about either experiential or material purchases they had made and then rate their thoughts and feelings about those purchases on nine-point scales. In some of our studies, people reported feeling more kinship with someone who had made the same experiential purchase than someone who had made the same material purchase. Owning the same T-shirt or sneakers as someone else is an interesting coincidence, but hiking the same trail or seeing the same performance makes people feel more connected, our experiments suggest. This reflects the fact that experiential purchases are more central to an individual’s identity: our data show that people feel…
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