Material does not create long-term happiness

If you want to have a lasting sense of happiness, you should travel and not buy a new computer.

Experiences, like watching movies or traveling, make us feel happier than material.Photo: flickr.com.

Livescience said scientists at Cornell University in the US analyzed eight studies of happiness to understand the most important factor that makes people feel satisfied with life. They discovered that life experiences - from watching a movie to traveling - tend to bring greater satisfaction than material accumulation. Also the feeling of happiness that the experiences bring also lasts longer. At first people can feel happy when they buy a new iPhone or an expensive outfit, but our feeling of contentment will decrease over time.

The team offers a number of reasons to explain how happiness comes from more experiences than matter. Among them are the reasons below.

People often wonder about material procurement decisions more than shopping experience. When we buy material, we never know whether the item we choose is the most reasonable thing.

Mankind rarely compares experiences together. So each experience brings a different kind of fun.

When buying an experience, people always find it easier to make decisions than when buying material.

We are easily in a sad state when we know someone can buy a cheaper and better item than what we buy. But for the behavior of buying experience, that ability is more unlikely.

The degree of satisfaction also depends on how we view material. Scientists in a study asked volunteers to think about the experiences they would experience if they bought an item. For example, when buying music players they think of immortal love songs. After a few months the research team asked volunteers to assess their satisfaction with the new item by a scale. The results show that people who perceive things as an experience have a higher level of satisfaction than others.

In another study, scientists asked 142 volunteers to list the times they bought things or experiences that cost less than $ 50. Then volunteers have to answer the questions: How difficult is the decision to buy? Are there any concerns about buying decisions? Satisfaction level when buying and now?

The results show that people who buy material seem to be more anxious about their decisions than those who buy experience. The level of satisfaction of material buyers also decreases faster.

In the third study, scientists asked 164 volunteers to imagine a situation in which they had just bought an object and an experience, but later learned that others bought similar items and experiences. with cheaper prices. The research team found that buyers of materials are more likely to fall into a state of torment, regret than buyers experience. The feeling of jealousy towards other people is also more likely to occur in the subject of buying material.

Because people do not have difficulty comparing objects, decisions to buy materials often bring a feeling of anxiety, more regret than buying experience. So matter is incomparable to the experience of bringing happiness to people, Cornell University expert team concluded.