“To Do or to Have? That is the Question”

12 thoughts on ““To Do or to Have? That is the Question””

1. One of the problems with this research and the article on the research is that the distinction between “material” consumption and “experiential” consumption is assumed to be a binary opposition. I imagine most people don’t consume simply to experience or to own something. Usually, someone makes a purchase to facilitate a form of experience such as when one buys a pot or utensil to cook something or learn to cook. Or one buys a bicycle for transportation, fitness, racing, etc. Or one buys a sports car so they can feel a certain kind of power or speed or prestige. Just because you purchase something material doesn’t mean you don’t associate with the object experientially. And just because you purchase something intangible (like a meal) doesn’t mean you don’t associate with the experience in a material way. When someone eats at the most expensive restaurant in town they observe the quality of the materials around them, the details of the food, the decor, the ambience (music, sound level, etc.) as well as experiencing certain innate psychological reactions such as a feeling of privilege or pleasure from the material consumption involved in eating or acting in some other scenario. Essentially, both material and experiential types of consumption lead to similar psychological phenomena so it doesn’t make sense to arbitrarily study them as an opposition and then make judgements on the results.

2. My family budget for pleasures beyond food, shelter and clothing generally leans toward experiences, however I believe a nice balance between owning pleasing material objects (within reason) and intangibles is a fair situation.

3. driving my BMW is an experience that i enjoy every day.

4. Here’s another thought-provoking article about happiness.  I think I posted this reference once already in the comments section of this blog, but here it is again:

   The Futile Pursuit of Happiness
   If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong.  That is to say, if Daniel
   Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to believe that a new car will make you
   as happy as you imagine.  You are wrong to believe that a new kitchen will
   make you happy for as long as you imagine.  […]
   … How we forecast our feelings, and whether those predictions match our future emotional states, had never been the stuff of laboratory research.  But in scores of experiments, [researchers] Gilbert, Wilson, Kahneman and Loewenstein have made a slew of
   observations and conclusions that undermine a number of fundamental
   assumptions:  namely, that we humans understand what we want and are adept at
   improving our well-being — that we are good at maximizing our utility, in
   the jargon of traditional economics.  Further, their work on prediction
   raises some unsettling and somewhat more personal questions.  To understand
   affective forecasting, as Gilbert has termed these studies, is to wonder if
   everything you have ever thought about life choices, and about happiness,
   has been at the least somewhat naive and, at worst, greatly mistaken.

   The article originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine on Sept. 7, 2003.  It’s reprinted here: http://healthandenergy.com/pursuit_of_happiness.htm

5. A couple of comments on the study: It only accounts for two means by which people dispose of discretionary income – spending on “stuff” or spending on “experience.” However, I know several people who give away most of their discretionary income. I don’t know how this activity would be classified, but my friends are all happy people. Second, the results show that an annual income increases, the value attached to experiential spending increases. I wonder how much of this is an indicator of how much happiness experience brings vs. how much happiness financial freedom brings. In other words, everything is more “fun” when you don’t have the mortgage, etc. on the back of your mind all the time.

6. Very bad article.
   You can buy materials things to have an experience, like a digital camera, a car, even a home theather. I know people who like to decorate and fix their houses. This is totally materialist but involves an experience. Other people spend a lot of money in an specific thing like photographic equipment. Maybe the author of the article doesn

7. I think the experiment paper discusses many of the issues raised in previous comments; the researchers were wary of the various ambiguities… and tried to design questions and assumptions that in the end make it relatively worthwhile.

   The key seems the subjective approach to the spending, and that is hard to ellicit.
   Does it make sense to talk about subjective approaches that can be qualified as “materialistic” and “experiential”. I think it’s useful to a point… which?

   Other issues I see: money was part of the experiments, but many experiential activities are free! Walking, playing with pets, shopping for someone else, staying in bed. Obtaining material stuff often involves negative experiences: crowded malls, scarce parking, highways, strange or pushy clerks, mentally balancing accounts, complex product comparison, etc… These may leave more traces (fatigue, stress, etc) in the long run than the goods we get used to in the end.

   A converse ambiguity to the experience one derives from material goods, is treating en experience as a material good: european vacation: check!, ecoadventure: check!, kiss exotic girl/boy: check!… ‘been there, done that, got the Tshirt… what’s next… what are the Joneses up to?

   I’d agree that exploring the material/experiential distinction is quite tricky; it opens to issues with the feasability of psychology as science. Is psychology a way to study happiness at all?

   The good thing about the study is to (even shakily) continue the discussion about these very ideas: happiness, how one know it, materialsm, experience… we’re too afraid of these “heavy” words and discussions.

8. Related to the idea that people _and_ things are being valued more for the experience they create is NYT columnist Virginia Postrel’s book “The Substance of Style”. It is a good read.

   http://dynamist.com/tsos

9. Ignores Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, where he makes the instructive comparision between the rich man who has throws parties and the rich man who builds a stone fence around his property.

   Twenty years later, the man with the stone fence is still enjoying the utility of the fence where the man who threw the parties has nothing. Our psychologist introduces the idea of fond memories as having utility, a concept which didn’t seem to occur to Adam Smith.

   It is instructive to note the expected lifetime of most material goods. When Adam Smith talked about building a stone wall around your house, the presumption was that the wall would last well into several generations. Few material goods made today last that long.

10. Ignores Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”, where he makes the instructive comparision between the rich man who has throws parties and the rich man who builds a stone fence around his property.

    Twenty years later, the man with the stone fence is still enjoying the utility of the fence where the man who threw the parties has nothing. Our psychologist introduces the idea of fond memories as having utility, a concept which didn’t seem to occur to Adam Smith.

    It is instructive to note the expected lifetime of most material goods. When Adam Smith talked about building a stone wall around your house, the presumption was that the wall would last well into several generations. Few material goods made today last that long.

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