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Do objects or experiences make us happier? · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House stuff
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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's here,
0:16
Speaker 1: and uh, stuff you should know. We've got the eighteen
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Speaker 1: Yeah in the house, not the Chuck Holograham. It's not
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Speaker 1: guest producers mad or Noel. It's not pocket Josh, not
0:29
Speaker 1: pocket Josh, although I did have a pocket Josh on me.
0:33
Speaker 1: So he's here, He's always here. That's a voodoo doll. No,
0:37
Speaker 1: it's not. It's clearly a voodoo doll. That's my hair.
0:40
Speaker 1: I recognize. How's that back pain treating you? Hurt so bad? Uh?
0:45
Speaker 1: How's it going pretty good except for the back pain. Well,
0:48
Speaker 1: let me just massize your little pocket Josh. I think
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Speaker 1: the touch me, Chuck. I'm excited about this one. Our
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Speaker 1: ongoing series on happiness. Yeah, we've covered it with the
1:01
Speaker 1: Bhutan Yeah, a Gross National Happiness, and then we did
1:05
Speaker 1: our audiobook All about Happiness, super Stuff Guide to Happiness,
1:09
Speaker 1: and all that was I guess a hold over from
1:12
Speaker 1: was it right before or right after the financial global
1:16
Speaker 1: financial collapse? M I feel like it was sort of
1:19
Speaker 1: in the midst of okay, because I think what it
1:23
Speaker 1: was was the world got cocky, especially the developed world.
1:26
Speaker 1: Sure like, hey, things are going so well, We're all rich,
1:30
Speaker 1: everybody's pretty happy. We're we're at war with not one
1:34
Speaker 1: but two countries at once. Look at us, go um,
1:38
Speaker 1: let's start talking about happiness and what makes us happy.
1:41
Speaker 1: Let's start blogs about how we try to be happy
1:44
Speaker 1: and enter it in once a day every day and
1:46
Speaker 1: then get a book deal out of it. Let's just
1:49
Speaker 1: think about happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness. Well, a few years on,
1:54
Speaker 1: there's been some changes over time. Everybody said, people don't
1:57
Speaker 1: talk about happiness anymore. Like there is a little while
2:01
Speaker 1: where there was a period basically from my impression about
2:04
Speaker 1: two thousand five to two thousand nine, where you could
2:08
Speaker 1: get substantial grants to conduct research into the nature of happiness,
2:14
Speaker 1: to quantify happiness, what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy,
2:18
Speaker 1: how to make people happier? Um. And there was an
2:22
Speaker 1: offshoot of psychology called positive psychology that we talked about,
2:28
Speaker 1: the super stub guided happiness that said, we're good at
2:33
Speaker 1: diagnosing um maladies, which physical maladies, no like problems, psychological problems,
2:42
Speaker 1: but we're terrible at um how to make people happier.
2:47
Speaker 1: So hence now we're going to have something called positive psychology,
2:50
Speaker 1: which appears to have fallen by the wayside um. Yeah,
2:54
Speaker 1: it's all negative psychology. Well, psychology itself as a field
2:57
Speaker 1: is under tremendous amount of attack, and positive psychology. I
3:01
Speaker 1: think they gave the chance to retreat. They're like, look,
3:04
Speaker 1: you're you're pretty easy target. You should probably go. This
3:08
Speaker 1: isn't even a real thing. I don't know. Maybe it
3:12
Speaker 1: was a valiant attempt. I think it just came in
3:14
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. But the the the point is,
3:18
Speaker 1: if you look up happiness now, you will notice, like
3:21
Speaker 1: just about everything cuts off. In two thousand nine, I
3:24
Speaker 1: did notice that actually American doesn't care about being happy anymore,
3:28
Speaker 1: or maybe they just hanging on studied and learned everything
3:30
Speaker 1: they need to know, and we're like, all right, here
3:32
Speaker 1: we are. Well, you know what, it's funny that you
3:34
Speaker 1: say that, because if that's true and you're you could
3:37
Speaker 1: be right, that represents them possibly the shortest amount of
3:43
Speaker 1: time any subject has ever been studied. No, really, because
3:46
Speaker 1: it started and what makes people happy? And maybe I
3:51
Speaker 1: think two thousand three I read I read a study,
3:54
Speaker 1: and it was about how this was one of the
3:57
Speaker 1: first studies to ever try to figure out what makes
4:00
Speaker 1: people happy. So then this field of study existed from
4:03
Speaker 1: like two thousand three to two thousand nine, and they
4:06
Speaker 1: were saying that the reason that this would be the
4:08
Speaker 1: first studies because it's been so accepted for so many
4:12
Speaker 1: years ever since. Hume the philosopher Hume, David Hume, Robert Hume,
4:18
Speaker 1: the Scottish philosopher is one of my favorites. Just if
4:21
Speaker 1: you're on Jeopardy, you could just say hum hum, We'll
4:23
Speaker 1: go with hum um. Who is hum if you're on
4:26
Speaker 1: Jeopardy he was the Scottish philosopher. No, I'm just had
4:29
Speaker 1: to phrase it, Okay, I'm just teasing um, he said.
4:33
Speaker 1: He was one of the first people to mention this
4:36
Speaker 1: concept of what makes people happy insofar as what we're
4:40
Speaker 1: talking about today, which is does an object make you happier?
4:46
Speaker 1: Or does an experience make you happier? Yeah, I think
4:49
Speaker 1: they've done like the lottery studies before two thousand four,
4:52
Speaker 1: like if lottery winners, But um, that's a pretty specialized study. Yes,
4:57
Speaker 1: So to my point is to try to honify happiness,
5:01
Speaker 1: that kind of thing and really investigated. But it started
5:05
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, that ended by the mid
5:07
Speaker 1: two thousand, the first decade of the tea. Well, while
5:11
Speaker 1: I'm reading all these studies, I'm looking oh seven oh
5:13
Speaker 1: eight oh four, Yeah, very keen observation, and I can't
5:19
Speaker 1: quite figure out. I mean, obviously, I think the Great
5:21
Speaker 1: Recession is almost entirely responsible for that falling to the wayside.
5:26
Speaker 1: But if you look still today, there's there are still
5:30
Speaker 1: related studies. It's just not happiness studies. Yeah, I found
5:34
Speaker 1: when I was reading this, I disagreed with a lot
5:36
Speaker 1: of these findings and studies. They didn't seem fully fleshed out,
5:41
Speaker 1: did they. Well, for instance, we'll go ahead and start
5:44
Speaker 1: with this supposed fact. Researchers have done some studying and
5:48
Speaker 1: they have pinned down how long a material object can
5:53
Speaker 1: will make you happy, and they say between six and
5:55
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, then you get bored with it. Basically, I
6:00
Speaker 1: just don't know about that because it wholly to me,
6:03
Speaker 1: it wholly depends on what the object is. That's something
6:06
Speaker 1: that gives you ongoing pleasure, like a guitar, let's say, yeah,
6:11
Speaker 1: because that is also an experience an object. But like
6:15
Speaker 1: I will love my guitars until I die because I
6:17
Speaker 1: play them and enjoy it and play them with my friends.
6:20
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, And what you're talking about the gift
6:22
Speaker 1: that keeps giving right exactly, that's called um uh, active engagement.
6:29
Speaker 1: It is a It is a purchase. And when we
6:33
Speaker 1: say purchase, we're not talking about necessarily just an object,
6:36
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a little bit. You can
6:38
Speaker 1: also you purchase experiences as well. In fact, they say
6:41
Speaker 1: that's the way to go, right. So there's a happiness purchase,
6:44
Speaker 1: is what we're saying. And your guitar that you purchased,
6:47
Speaker 1: that's an object, but you purchased it, but it's making
6:51
Speaker 1: you happy, you know, over and over and over again.
6:53
Speaker 1: The reason why is because you become actively engaged in
6:56
Speaker 1: an active engagement in anything that is positive or that
6:59
Speaker 1: makes you happy can continue to make you happy for
7:02
Speaker 1: longer than say another object that doesn't actively engage you,
7:07
Speaker 1: Like a pair of shoes that you wanted really really
7:09
Speaker 1: bad and then got and then like sit in your closets,
7:12
Speaker 1: you don't wear them anymore because after well, you may
7:14
Speaker 1: still wear them, but you're wearing them as shoes. You're
7:17
Speaker 1: not wearing them like I'm I'm the King of Rotterdamn
7:19
Speaker 1: here and check out my shoes. You know that that
7:23
Speaker 1: kind of thing that lacks active engagement, that lacks social interaction,
7:29
Speaker 1: and that lacks exercise. And those are the three, the
7:32
Speaker 1: big three things that you can buy objects wise that
7:36
Speaker 1: kind of sit outside of that six to twelve week Um,
7:40
Speaker 1: happiness adaptation is what it's called. Um. So, yeah, you
7:45
Speaker 1: kind of nailed it right there with the guitar. It's
7:47
Speaker 1: not just guitar. Video games are another good example. Yeah,
7:50
Speaker 1: like you buy your PS three and you may get
7:53
Speaker 1: sick of some of the games, but they're always releasing
7:55
Speaker 1: new games, right. Um, if you bought a um, a
8:00
Speaker 1: language module, you learn a language or something, you know,
8:04
Speaker 1: I mean like it's you're something that actively engage you,
8:07
Speaker 1: something that that you use for exercise, or something that
8:09
Speaker 1: leads to social interaction. Are the three object types that
8:14
Speaker 1: make you happier longer? Well, that makes me feel better
8:16
Speaker 1: than and um the whole six or twelve weeks though,
8:19
Speaker 1: whether that's a an accurate number not the chuck um.
8:24
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about the hedonic treadmill. It's evidence of
8:28
Speaker 1: the hedonic treadmill. That's just a thing called um hedonic adaptation,
8:32
Speaker 1: and that is that something that makes you happy isn't
8:35
Speaker 1: gonna make you happy forever. Something you've purchased pretty much,
8:40
Speaker 1: whatever it is, you're going to eventually subsume it into
8:45
Speaker 1: your everyday life. You're gonna end up taking it for granted, basically,
8:49
Speaker 1: is another way to put it. How long, how short
8:53
Speaker 1: that happens, or how long that happens is um. It
8:56
Speaker 1: definitely differs depending on the type, and we'll talk about
8:58
Speaker 1: the type in the minute. But what people end up
9:02
Speaker 1: getting on once once an object stop making stops making
9:06
Speaker 1: them happy, they still want to be happy. So they
9:09
Speaker 1: end up on the hedonic treadmill and buy another pair
9:11
Speaker 1: of shoes, and then another, and then another and then another.
9:14
Speaker 1: And you end up just trying to keep pace, buying
9:17
Speaker 1: all this stuff, accumulating all of this material stuff, and
9:22
Speaker 1: it's just kind of keeping you at a a steady
9:26
Speaker 1: pace of happiness without any kind of real enrichment. And
9:31
Speaker 1: that's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah, and that's materialism UM. Which
9:35
Speaker 1: they've done studies on materialism. There was one by these
9:39
Speaker 1: dudes Chaplain and John in two thousand seven where they
9:42
Speaker 1: linked it to low self esteem generally from childhood, Like
9:46
Speaker 1: you're sort of always trying to gain your self esteem
9:49
Speaker 1: through material objects. Uh. They've linked it to narcissism. Yeah,
9:54
Speaker 1: people who try to build themselves like up through having
9:57
Speaker 1: you know, fancy things and showing them off. Yeah. And
10:01
Speaker 1: there's the I mean, that's that is a real um
10:04
Speaker 1: technique that people use to establish their identities, established their
10:10
Speaker 1: worth to others. And it's a ironically, it's a cheap
10:14
Speaker 1: and easy way to do it. It may be very
10:17
Speaker 1: expensive dollar wise, but you don't have to put a
10:20
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of thought or effort into it. You just
10:22
Speaker 1: go by the most expensive, most obvious, uh obviously expensive
10:28
Speaker 1: item you can and wear it out and broadcast it
10:31
Speaker 1: and get your sense of self worth from that. So
10:34
Speaker 1: it is very shallow thing materialism. I think everybody kind
10:36
Speaker 1: of knows that intuitively, but it's been studied, you know,
10:40
Speaker 1: like it it is linked to all these kind of
10:42
Speaker 1: um personality disorders. There's a guy named Russ Belk who's
10:46
Speaker 1: a marketing researcher, and he was the first one to
10:47
Speaker 1: really research materialism on the Belk Chain of Stars, I wonder,
10:52
Speaker 1: and he uh, he found it to be a character
10:55
Speaker 1: trait marked by envy, non generosity, and possessiveness. Yeah, materialism
11:03
Speaker 1: is so hard to define for me though, because it's
11:04
Speaker 1: like a guitar is a material object and a nice
11:08
Speaker 1: guitar is. I don't know. I definitely not materialistic, I
11:14
Speaker 1: don't think, but I want a nice guitar because it
11:16
Speaker 1: sounds awesome, it looks cool. But I think that that's
11:19
Speaker 1: why like Belk and Chaplain and John went to the
11:23
Speaker 1: trouble of like kind of investigating it. It's like, do
11:25
Speaker 1: you do you have like a clinically flawed personality? Uh,
11:31
Speaker 1: that's based on your desire for material objects. Yeah, but
11:36
Speaker 1: see that, like it's all personal. Like I might think
11:39
Speaker 1: it's material to go out and buy a pair of
11:43
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollar shoes, but the person might get a
11:46
Speaker 1: lot of joy out of those shoes, and say, I
11:47
Speaker 1: think it's stupid to go pay a thousand dollars for
11:49
Speaker 1: a guitar. You know, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
11:54
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm saying. You don't know. I mean,
11:55
Speaker 1: I think you raise a good point, and it's it's
11:58
Speaker 1: valid because there that the research isn't that deep. I mean,
12:04
Speaker 1: you could be exactly right, and I think it's subject yes.
12:08
Speaker 1: And not only is this whole you know, the finding subjective,
12:11
Speaker 1: the reportings are subjective to Like there's a study in
12:14
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, UM in two thousand nine. The last
12:18
Speaker 1: year that happiness was ever studied, the last year of
12:20
Speaker 1: happiness mattered m and basically this uh, this group had
12:25
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty four college students, it's pretty small
12:29
Speaker 1: fill out a survey. They said that we want you
12:31
Speaker 1: to pick um. We want you to write down a
12:35
Speaker 1: little bit about an object that you purchased to make
12:39
Speaker 1: you happy in the last three months, or an experience
12:42
Speaker 1: that made you happy in the last three months that
12:44
Speaker 1: you purchased. Yes, which is important to distinguish that, right,
12:48
Speaker 1: because you think you're gonna have free experiences too, you can, yeah,
12:52
Speaker 1: and we'll get to that. But the college students um
12:56
Speaker 1: self reported that the at the time of the purchase,
13:01
Speaker 1: the experiences made them happier, and the happiness lasted longer
13:06
Speaker 1: than the ones who reported an object made them happy. Yeah.
13:10
Speaker 1: I mean every study pretty much confirms experiences over material objects. Yes.
13:17
Speaker 1: My point is it was self reported, so it's subjective
13:20
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, and that's the problem with
13:22
Speaker 1: studying things like happiness. It's it's an emotion which is subjective.
13:25
Speaker 1: And then it was also a small sample of college students, um,
13:30
Speaker 1: homogeneous group and what do they know? Not they'ren't money
13:34
Speaker 1: for anything now there, But there's this UM acronym for
13:38
Speaker 1: college for studies like that. It's weird. It's Western educated,
13:44
Speaker 1: uh something rich and democratic. Yeah, I can't remember what
13:50
Speaker 1: the eye but weird it's it's and it's saying like
13:53
Speaker 1: there's a lot of studies out there that people rely
13:56
Speaker 1: on that are weird that the population sample are like
13:59
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty one year old, right, you know, fairly
14:02
Speaker 1: well off western kids, right, Like, what does that really
14:05
Speaker 1: tell us? Yeah? Yeah, so um, this is an example
14:08
Speaker 1: of that. I saw another study that thought was interesting.
14:11
Speaker 1: As far as objects go, um, Like, like we said,
14:14
Speaker 1: across the board, it's they pretty much have said experiences
14:17
Speaker 1: purchased or free mean more to someone in the long
14:20
Speaker 1: run than an object. But um, when it comes to
14:22
Speaker 1: spending on objects, this one study did find that spending
14:26
Speaker 1: on others across the board, even on an object, is
14:30
Speaker 1: brings more happiness than spending on yourself for an object. Yeah. Um,
14:36
Speaker 1: And in fact, uh, people were assigned to spend money
14:39
Speaker 1: and one of these studies, and they experienced greater happiness.
14:43
Speaker 1: And people assigned to spend money on themselves, like here's
14:46
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars go by yourself something nice, or here's
14:49
Speaker 1: a hundred bucks go by someone else something nice. People
14:51
Speaker 1: were happier that bought something for someone else, which was interesting.
14:54
Speaker 1: And that's you're saying, that's like the case with objects
14:56
Speaker 1: and experiences as well. I think that was just objects,
15:00
Speaker 1: but I would say it probably holds true for experience,
15:02
Speaker 1: Like you takes someone out to dinner, you feel good
15:04
Speaker 1: about it. So what you what you have there is
15:07
Speaker 1: you're spending on another person. It's there. It's fostering social interaction,
15:11
Speaker 1: which is another key huge and it's an experience. Yeah,
15:15
Speaker 1: pretty much like you couldn't get happier than that. Yeah,
15:17
Speaker 1: the social thing is kind of the key to all
15:19
Speaker 1: of this, they say, because generally your experience happiness is
15:24
Speaker 1: usually not alone, like you'll go to a concert with
15:28
Speaker 1: someone or to dinner with someone. But um, but not
15:31
Speaker 1: always right and not always is a pretty good little
15:34
Speaker 1: buzz term for this part of the podcast, because um,
15:40
Speaker 1: there's also research that shows that objects can bring more
15:45
Speaker 1: happiness than experiences, depending on the experience. Like for a
15:48
Speaker 1: long time, the literature just basically said experiences make you
15:52
Speaker 1: happier than objects. It's exactly. And these researchers found that
15:56
Speaker 1: um a an unhappy experience, Yeah, especially one that was
16:01
Speaker 1: meant to be happy. Like let's say you want on
16:03
Speaker 1: a cruise or you went on a vacation and it
16:06
Speaker 1: just sucked like that. That compared to an object that's
16:11
Speaker 1: supposed to make you happy, that object is gonna beat
16:13
Speaker 1: that experience and you're gonna have that bad memory of
16:17
Speaker 1: the experience longer too. Yeah. You know what else I
16:21
Speaker 1: think I haven't seen pointed out is you can't you
16:23
Speaker 1: can't get your money back on a bad dinner and play. Yeah,
16:27
Speaker 1: that's true. But if you get an object, you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: like this thinks you can usually return that unless you
16:33
Speaker 1: took a bite out of it already. Yeah, this is
16:36
Speaker 1: a good way to say it. But you can't, you
16:38
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like you take a vacation that
16:39
Speaker 1: ends up being a disaster, I would be more upset
16:42
Speaker 1: about that because it's like you've lost your money, You're
16:45
Speaker 1: gonna have this bad memory. But if you buy some
16:47
Speaker 1: stupid thing. You can like just resell it or on
16:49
Speaker 1: Craig Lester send it back, right. And um, so that's
16:53
Speaker 1: that's one distinction between materials, I guess objects and experiences. Yeah. Um,
16:59
Speaker 1: and we should give a shout out to start here.
17:02
Speaker 1: Who start sart Oh? Yeah, John Paul Sartra, the philosopher
17:08
Speaker 1: um who is kind of credited with really introducing this
17:12
Speaker 1: concept or codifying it into the mainstream. To start, there
17:15
Speaker 1: were three paths to happiness, are three types of happiness.
17:19
Speaker 1: There was um, having, doing and being and being we're
17:23
Speaker 1: not even talking about in this one, but having and doing, um,
17:27
Speaker 1: materialism and experientialism um start in the fifties. I think,
17:33
Speaker 1: uh just kind of introduce us into the literature, and
17:36
Speaker 1: that ultimately is what kicked off the this kind of
17:40
Speaker 1: study into which one is better, which one makes you happier? Yeah?
17:44
Speaker 1: And I like how you you wrote this, right. I
17:46
Speaker 1: like how you point out about Buddhism, how they feel
17:48
Speaker 1: that material objects actually get in the way of happiness.
17:51
Speaker 1: Not only may they not bring you happiness, but they
17:54
Speaker 1: will prevent it. Sure. And it's not just Buddhism, it's
17:57
Speaker 1: UM for centuries. It's just basically been accepted that an
18:01
Speaker 1: object is less desirable if you're seeking happiness than an experience,
18:08
Speaker 1: and it's that's why the researchers were saying, Um, you know,
18:14
Speaker 1: we're one of the first studies to to conduct and
18:17
Speaker 1: an investigation into this because it's just been generally accepted
18:21
Speaker 1: that that's the case, but no one knew exactly why.
18:25
Speaker 1: So now we've kind of reached the why parts. And
18:27
Speaker 1: one of the things you said is, um, you can't
18:30
Speaker 1: take an experience back. All right, hold on to that thought.
18:33
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick message break and we'll get back
18:35
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Speaker 1: dot Com enter stuff. Okay, So why well, um, you
19:49
Speaker 1: mentioned that objects. Uh, you can take an object back,
19:54
Speaker 1: you can't take an experience back. One of the big
19:58
Speaker 1: differences that researchers came up with is that with experiences
20:04
Speaker 1: you can because you can't take them back. They're kind
20:07
Speaker 1: of esoteric. They're also more subject to revision. Right, so
20:13
Speaker 1: you can you can think back to an experience and
20:16
Speaker 1: over time, but stopped pump it up, alter it slightly, um,
20:20
Speaker 1: make it more meaningful, whatever. Um, you're just kind of
20:24
Speaker 1: adding to it. You remember when we did that thing
20:27
Speaker 1: on memory, We research memory, and it's like every time
20:30
Speaker 1: you bring up memory, you kind of add to it.
20:32
Speaker 1: When you store it away, it's different, it's altered in
20:35
Speaker 1: one way. Well, what you're remembering an experience, you're not
20:39
Speaker 1: remembering an object because you have the object in your
20:41
Speaker 1: hand and you're shaking it and you're like, why don't
20:43
Speaker 1: you make me happy anymore? What happened to you? I
20:45
Speaker 1: wanted this this object so bad, and you know, and
20:49
Speaker 1: and now it's whatever. And the reason why is because
20:54
Speaker 1: it's part of your present, and experience is part of
20:57
Speaker 1: your past. It can be your immediate pastor just past whatever,
21:00
Speaker 1: and that is subject to revisionism, which is one of
21:03
Speaker 1: the reasons why they think that when you especially self
21:06
Speaker 1: report what makes you happier, you're probably going to go
21:10
Speaker 1: with an experience. Yeah, and I'm kind of that way.
21:12
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, even with bad experiences,
21:15
Speaker 1: later on you might think, uh, oh, you know it
21:19
Speaker 1: was bad at the time, but we also we laugh
21:21
Speaker 1: about it now, or you know, how you can reframe
21:24
Speaker 1: bad experiences or if you're like super on the ball.
21:28
Speaker 1: In the moment, you can say, you know, maybe we'll
21:31
Speaker 1: be laughing at this in ten minutes, like you know,
21:34
Speaker 1: some terrible vacation, Like I have fun memories about bad experiences,
21:39
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's revisionism. I think it's uh,
21:42
Speaker 1: just time. And maybe at the time you're not looking
21:45
Speaker 1: at the positives, you know, right, because your genes are
21:50
Speaker 1: expressing all sorts of horrific things that are making you
21:53
Speaker 1: so mad, you know. Um, But once the genes go
21:56
Speaker 1: back to normal, Yeah, things kind of take on a
21:59
Speaker 1: different cast. Like, for instance, Uh, we went on a
22:02
Speaker 1: big group camping trip like five or six years ago,
22:04
Speaker 1: a bunch of us, Um, my dog got in a
22:07
Speaker 1: fight with my friend Justin's dog, poured down rain and
22:11
Speaker 1: it was the worst camping trip I've ever been on.
22:14
Speaker 1: But now we look back at it and we laugh,
22:16
Speaker 1: and we remember the midnight dance party we had in
22:20
Speaker 1: the rain and we made the best of it. But
22:22
Speaker 1: at the time we're all like, man, I gotta get
22:24
Speaker 1: out of here. This is miserable, do you know what
22:27
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Like I look back on certain miserable experiences
22:30
Speaker 1: and kind of laugh about him. There aren't many awful
22:34
Speaker 1: experiences unless it's involved, like, you know, something really bad
22:38
Speaker 1: and like life changing. Like I don't look back at
22:41
Speaker 1: like the death of a relative and say, you know,
22:43
Speaker 1: that was really pretty fun. Now I thought that that
22:46
Speaker 1: dress they buried her and was horrible, but now it's hilarious. Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah,
22:51
Speaker 1: you can't do that with an object. No, you can't
22:53
Speaker 1: do that. And even if you stay well, I remember
22:56
Speaker 1: when I was eight, I got this awesome um Castle
23:01
Speaker 1: Gray school place and it was the bomb and I
23:04
Speaker 1: was so happy. Um, what you're doing right there is
23:08
Speaker 1: remembering an object, which is significant, but sort of the
23:13
Speaker 1: experience of having it thought. Yeah, that's the big distinction.
23:17
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody in the literature has done
23:19
Speaker 1: a very good job or did a very good job
23:21
Speaker 1: over that six year period when happiness was studied of
23:26
Speaker 1: explaining that that. When you're talking about materialism versus experientialism,
23:32
Speaker 1: objects versus experiences, like you're talking about the object itself
23:37
Speaker 1: and not your propensity to generate memories and experiences through
23:42
Speaker 1: the object, which is kind of confusing and cluttering frankly,
23:46
Speaker 1: but it's an important point. Uh. There's a book out
23:51
Speaker 1: people love writing books about this stuff too, telling them
23:54
Speaker 1: for you know online. Elizabe Dunna. Michael Norton wrote one
23:58
Speaker 1: called Happy Money. The science is Smarter Spending. Uh. And
24:02
Speaker 1: they track down some key principles. Um. They they obviously
24:09
Speaker 1: say experiences are more valuable than objects, but they break
24:12
Speaker 1: it down further and give you some advice, like you
24:15
Speaker 1: should buy an experience. First of all, you should make
24:18
Speaker 1: it a treat, which means, you know, it makes it
24:20
Speaker 1: more special if you limit your access to these things. Uh.
24:23
Speaker 1: And I get that if you go to like some
24:25
Speaker 1: really fancy restaurant, it's great, but if you go like
24:28
Speaker 1: every week, you're kind of like, all right, I'm kind
24:30
Speaker 1: of sick of sick of this place. They say you
24:35
Speaker 1: should buy time, which I'm not fully sure to understand
24:39
Speaker 1: what that means. You go to another human being and
24:42
Speaker 1: say I would like to purchase one to two years
24:44
Speaker 1: of your life. Um, and you just put it onto
24:47
Speaker 1: my little watch here. I'm gonna take it from your watch.
24:50
Speaker 1: How much do you want? And then they give you
24:52
Speaker 1: some of their life o. Uh. And then they say
24:56
Speaker 1: to invest in others, which goes back to that original
24:58
Speaker 1: study I was talking about. And then pay now and
25:01
Speaker 1: consume later, and that delayed consumption leads to increased enjoyment.
25:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which is the opposite of one of the
25:08
Speaker 1: tenants of materialism, like exactly, and then you pay now. Apparently,
25:13
Speaker 1: people who are um um, I guess registered materialists. I
25:18
Speaker 1: don't remember how they quantified at r MS figured it
25:21
Speaker 1: out in the UM in the study, but people who
25:25
Speaker 1: are materialistic have UM more credit cards, typically have at
25:29
Speaker 1: least one loan of a thousand dollars and more outstanding. Um.
25:33
Speaker 1: It's just kind of a not only does it lead
25:37
Speaker 1: to or is it associated with character flaws, it also
25:41
Speaker 1: has other pitfalls and pathfalls associated with it too, like debt. Yeah,
25:46
Speaker 1: that's the exact opposite that's consumed now, pay later exactly,
25:49
Speaker 1: whereas the other is like cantra and this is like
25:53
Speaker 1: whatever the opposite of tantra is. I don't know, um,
25:58
Speaker 1: but the the there's this kind of unspoken or very
26:01
Speaker 1: rarely spoken indictment of material culture um and that well,
26:09
Speaker 1: I ran across this one quote. It's called it's a
26:12
Speaker 1: consumer Materialism is a degrading outcome of untrammeled marketing power.
26:16
Speaker 1: That it's kind of like you have people who possibly
26:19
Speaker 1: have low self esteem, low self worth, and are looking
26:21
Speaker 1: for a way to generate their own identity. Who are
26:25
Speaker 1: more highly susceptible, maybe too being marketed to like, if
26:29
Speaker 1: you drink this liquor, you're going to turn into a
26:33
Speaker 1: lion and own the barrier. And no matter what your
26:36
Speaker 1: salary is, as long as you can afford a bottle
26:39
Speaker 1: of this, no matter how much it puts you out,
26:41
Speaker 1: you're gonna You're gonna be awesome. Your friends are gonna
26:44
Speaker 1: be awesome. And some people say, like, I need to
26:47
Speaker 1: feel awesome right now, and I'm willing to shell out
26:50
Speaker 1: fifty bucks for that, and I'm gonna do it. And
26:54
Speaker 1: who knows, maybe it does pump them up a little bit,
26:56
Speaker 1: hopefully though ideally, if it does pump them up, pump
26:59
Speaker 1: them up to a level where they realize that materialism
27:02
Speaker 1: isn't going to make them happy. What about a facelift?
27:07
Speaker 1: That's neither an object nor I guess the experience is
27:09
Speaker 1: having the new face. Apparently, plastic surgery um people are
27:14
Speaker 1: reported to have surgery people they they are reported to
27:17
Speaker 1: have longer lasting happiness. That hedonic adaptation takes way longer
27:21
Speaker 1: for plastic surgery than other I guess purchases interesting. Uh, well,
27:28
Speaker 1: going back to the whole lottery thing, I think everyone
27:31
Speaker 1: knows that all the studies generally point to it's like
27:34
Speaker 1: a baseline happiness. Objects can make you happy in the moment,
27:37
Speaker 1: But with lottery winners, they did find out repeatedly that
27:41
Speaker 1: they generally go back to their baseline happiness from before
27:43
Speaker 1: they had the dough. And I would say that's the
27:46
Speaker 1: case for most of these studies. It's not about how
27:48
Speaker 1: happy you are in a moment or even in a
27:50
Speaker 1: given experience or holding an object, but eventually you're going
27:54
Speaker 1: to return to the schmuck that you are. You're either
27:57
Speaker 1: happy or you're not. You know, we're remember when we
28:00
Speaker 1: did our super Stuff Guide to Happiness, there was that um,
28:03
Speaker 1: one of the founders of trans humanism, who was saying, like,
28:06
Speaker 1: we need to figure out how to ratchet up everybody's
28:08
Speaker 1: base level happiness. Yeah, like even with pills and things right,
28:11
Speaker 1: or genetic um manipulation or whatever. He's like, whatever it takes,
28:16
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that should be a pursuit
28:18
Speaker 1: of humanity is making everyone happier by nature. I don't
28:23
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I think you said the same thing
28:25
Speaker 1: in the stuff. Yeah, because I think pathos is valuable.
28:30
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I'm pretty sure we made that point.
28:34
Speaker 1: It seems like something you would say and I'd be like, yeah,
28:37
Speaker 1: I do. I think it's valuable to the human experience.
28:39
Speaker 1: I think it's I can do a lot of good
28:42
Speaker 1: to be uh, briefly depressed. And well here's an example
28:47
Speaker 1: of that. Um, this the Great Recession. Since the Great Recession,
28:53
Speaker 1: teenagers have been reporting um less desire for material objects
28:58
Speaker 1: than the teenagers for a decade before. Um, They're like,
29:02
Speaker 1: but you're not talking about my smartphone, right, everything? But
29:04
Speaker 1: that right, Well, they were saying like they're there. Um,
29:07
Speaker 1: they were scoring on like materialism surveys as less materialistic
29:12
Speaker 1: than their counterparts a decade before, and they were more
29:14
Speaker 1: likely to say things like I want a job that
29:17
Speaker 1: benefits society. They were they were becoming less materialistic and
29:21
Speaker 1: more pro social, and they were saying that that's a
29:24
Speaker 1: direct result of this Great Recession. So lessons learned. Yeah,
29:27
Speaker 1: your point that, um, that depression of one way or
29:30
Speaker 1: one sort or another can be beneficial. It's on a
29:34
Speaker 1: social societal level that's true too. Apparently, Yeah, I did it.
29:39
Speaker 1: Happiness objects or or experiences. What do you think I
29:43
Speaker 1: think objects super shiny, golden, golden, sparkly objects. Yeah, which
29:50
Speaker 1: is one last thing. I think you made a really
29:51
Speaker 1: good point, like wanting a guitar is doesn't make you
29:56
Speaker 1: a materialist. You don't have to reject all possession to
30:00
Speaker 1: be a good, grounded, normal, happy person. Yeah. Listen to
30:04
Speaker 1: our podcasts on freegans, yeah, dumpster diving. I think those
30:09
Speaker 1: people are happy. I think I say yes, yeah, and
30:12
Speaker 1: go check out our super Stuff Guide to Happiness. It
30:15
Speaker 1: was very, very good. It's on iTunes. It's available on iTunes. Yeah,
30:20
Speaker 1: just blow the dust off of it. It's still relevant
30:22
Speaker 1: because everything stopped in two thousand nine. It was so
30:25
Speaker 1: interesting too. Yeah, it was a good one. Uh. And
30:27
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about objects or um experiences,
30:31
Speaker 1: you can type those words in the search bar at
30:33
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and it will bring up
30:36
Speaker 1: this article that we were working off of. And since
30:39
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right,
30:44
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this grocery waste. We did our podcast
30:48
Speaker 1: on de fridging, and we got a surprisingly a lot
30:51
Speaker 1: of responses from people. Yeah, I was kind of surprised.
30:54
Speaker 1: It really hit home. Uh. So this is from a
30:57
Speaker 1: former grocery store employee when he was in high school.
31:01
Speaker 1: He said, part of my job at the store was
31:03
Speaker 1: to find all the eggs, bread and milk that had
31:04
Speaker 1: a cell by date within the next three days. Uh.
31:07
Speaker 1: And it's really terrible because cell by dates are designed
31:10
Speaker 1: with some wiggle room just to make sure nothing is
31:12
Speaker 1: spoiling before the date on the cart. And when I
31:14
Speaker 1: had the cart loaded up with perfectly good food, I
31:17
Speaker 1: had to throw the bread and eggs into the garbage
31:19
Speaker 1: compactor and pour all the milk down the drain dozens
31:22
Speaker 1: of gallons a night. M It's just like maddening. And
31:27
Speaker 1: I got with the local f f a teacher whatever
31:29
Speaker 1: that is, and asked if yeah, look at you, okay,
31:36
Speaker 1: whatever that is, I don't remember for you remember. Um?
31:41
Speaker 1: They asked if all this wasted food? Um. I asked
31:44
Speaker 1: if all the wasted food could be used to slap
31:45
Speaker 1: the pigs that the students were raising, and he said
31:48
Speaker 1: that'd be a great idea. So I went to the
31:49
Speaker 1: manager of the grocery store, said we should do this
31:52
Speaker 1: and it might even be good pr for us. It
31:54
Speaker 1: turns out the grocery store got back partial store credit
31:58
Speaker 1: from their suppliers for expired food that they threw away.
32:01
Speaker 1: And here's the hitch. They would not get any credit
32:03
Speaker 1: if any of the expired food was put to any use.
32:07
Speaker 1: Isn't that awful. Some suppliers would even refuse credit if
32:10
Speaker 1: they decided the store wasn't doing enough to prevent dumpster
32:13
Speaker 1: divers from retrieving food. What's worse, many foods that don't
32:17
Speaker 1: actually spoil for years and years, but they have arbitrarily
32:21
Speaker 1: short sell by dates because they found that people don't
32:24
Speaker 1: trust foods to have an expiration date too far into
32:26
Speaker 1: the future. Can you remember didn't we talk about, Oh,
32:28
Speaker 1: I did a brain stuff on water going bad, and
32:30
Speaker 1: it's like, there's no reason for it to have an
32:32
Speaker 1: expiration date. Yeah? Uh so, he says. Thus, I spent
32:37
Speaker 1: one memorable evening throwaway throwing out hundreds of dollars worth
32:41
Speaker 1: of cheese that was a known danger of spoiling anytime soon.
32:45
Speaker 1: Even asked if I could take some home, and they
32:47
Speaker 1: said that that would be considered shoplifting. Wow. So I
32:52
Speaker 1: don't see food waste being addressed until it becomes a
32:54
Speaker 1: matter of public outrage. On the level of sweatshop labor.
32:58
Speaker 1: There are just too many economic barriers in the way.
33:01
Speaker 1: That is from Todd from Okay. See thanks Todd, And
33:03
Speaker 1: that is just his store. We heard from other people
33:05
Speaker 1: some stores have different policies where they can actually put
33:09
Speaker 1: some of that food to use, but I don't think
33:11
Speaker 1: that's the norm. No. And we heard from another guy
33:13
Speaker 1: too who was fired because he got so tired of
33:15
Speaker 1: throwing stuff where he took a bunch of baguettes to
33:18
Speaker 1: a homeless shelter and they found out about it and
33:20
Speaker 1: he was fired because of it. Um, but he said
33:23
Speaker 1: he didn't regret. It's still his day. Good good for him. Yeah, Um,
33:27
Speaker 1: thanks Todd from Okay. See I would say go thunder,
33:29
Speaker 1: but go heat instead. Uh. If you want to get
33:33
Speaker 1: in touch with Chuck or Me or Jerry, UM, you
33:36
Speaker 1: can send us a tweet. Our handle is s y
33:40
Speaker 1: s K Podcast with the little at symbol ahead of that.
33:42
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know
33:45
Speaker 1: check us out there. UM. You can check out our
33:48
Speaker 1: YouTube channel Josh and Chuck that's the name of it.
33:51
Speaker 1: You'll love it. Um. You can also send us a
33:55
Speaker 1: regular old email Stuff podcast at discovery dot com and
34:00
Speaker 1: want to st at home on the web. It is
34:01
Speaker 1: awesome stuff dot com for more on this and thousands
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