• DOI:10.1037/a0017145
Corpus ID: 21473153

The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases.

@article{Carter2010TheRR,
  title={The relative relativity of material and experiential purchases.},
  author={T. Carter and T. Gilovich},
  journal={Journal of personality and social psychology},
  year={2010},
  volume={98 1},
  pages={
          146-59
        }
}

• T. Carter, T. Gilovich
• Published 2010
• Psychology, Medicine
• Journal of personality and social psychology

When it comes to spending disposable income, experiential purchases tend to make people happier than material purchases (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). But why are experiences more satisfying? We propose that the evaluation of experiences tends to be less comparative than that of material possessions, such that potentially invidious comparisons have less impact on satisfaction with experiences than with material possessions. Support for this contention was obtained in 8 studies. We found that… Expand

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