The material things proven to make you happy
While it is often said that material things don’t make you happy, new research show there are some material things that will
It’s often said that money can’t buy happiness and that material possessions often lead to dissatisfaction and materialism. Research has always suggested that the best purchases are those that are experience based – think tickets to a concert or a holiday. This kind of spending is thought to increase your happiness and satisfaction levels due to the timeless, social aspect that comes with most experiences. A holiday will never date while an iPhone will, and very quickly.
Recently, however, researchers have found a third category of purchases, experiential products’ or things that ultimately help to facilitate experiences. Such products might be a tennis racket for a tennis fan that wants to pursue lessons or a guitar for a music nut. They are still “things” but they come with an inherent ability to be linked to a deeper experience.
Researchers at San Francisco State University decided to test out these three types of purchases and how they affect our happiness. To investigate, they asked people about various purchases they’d recently made and how happy these had made them. As expected purely material purchases made people the least happy, but the experiential products made people just as happy as the pure experiences.
The takeaway? Experience may be king when it comes to spending your hard earned dollars but when it comes to gift buying (or giving), don’t discount the experiential stuff.
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