We adapt slowly
Why would a bad experience be especially negative? It turns out that we can't always gloss over the bad things we remember. Our most cherished memories are experiences, like that first kiss, rather than material things. But for the same reason that the good memories stick around, so do the bad memories. "We adapt to experiences slower," Goodman says.His third experiment tested that element of time. At intervals from one day to two weeks after the experiment, he asked the subjects to rate the purchases they originally recalled. Feelings of happiness stayed more constant over time when it came to the experiential purchases than they did for the material purchases.
What does that mean in practice? "If you buy a couch and it looks bad in your living room, you get over and adapt to that happiness faster than, say, a terrible vacation," Goodman says.
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How materialistic are you?
But not all people feel the same way about what they buy. The study also tries to take into account people who are biased to prefer material things. So Goodman gave his participants a test to determine how important materialistic values are to them.The people who answered those questions the same way had other things in common in the results of the experiment. The more material things mattered to a person, the less those people made a distinction between material and experiential purchases. "When a positive experience happens to them, they don't seem to be any happier than with a material purchase," Goodman says. So for highly materialistic people, it's not necessarily true that buying experiences is riskier for their happiness.
Think twice before you buy
So what's the lesson for the average consumer? Stop before you spend money on a trip to see a long-lost relative or on concert tickets for an old band's reunion."Before you make the purchase, ask yourself, 'How likely is this to turn out negatively?'" Goodman advises.
Maybe there's a reason you haven't seen the relative in a while. Maybe what was once your favorite band isn't as good as it once was. If the risk of the purchase turning out bad is high, you might be better off giving in to your materialism and spending that money on a new tangible luxury good.
Published June 12, 2009
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