Does Shopping Buy Happiness?

Take a sunny holiday instead of going on a shopping spree if you're looking at buying happiness. According to a study out of Cornell University, people's satisfaction with life experiences, from seeing a movie to going on vacation, tends to start high and increases over time. Though shopping therapy does provide a level of happiness, the satisfaction wanes and diminishes. The results were published in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The findings are based on eight separate studies showing that experience-related purchases lead to more happiness and here's why:

- people often second-guess their purchases
- we think of experiences in our own terms rather than comparing them to other things
- it's easier to decide on an experiential discretionary purchase than a material purchase
- we get upset if a better deal comes along after we've made the purchase

It all comes down to state of mind. When participants in a study thought of a CD as an experience of many hours of music listening, their satisfaction level increased over those who viewed it simply as a material purchase. In another study involving 142 participants involving a purchase that cost at least $50, the people who thought of the buy as a material purchase were less satisfied than those who thought of their purchase as an experience.

Yet another study proving this point involved 164 shoppers who were asked a hypothetical question on a purchase such as a watch, laptop, MP3 player, jeans, or an experience such as a restaurant, movie, or vacation that was made, only to find out a better choice existed. The subjects who imagined a material purchase were significantly less satisfied than those who imagined the experiential purchase.

Since material goods can easily be compared with other products, material purchases bring more concern and less happiness than buying an experience. Does money buy happiness? The jury is out on that one.