Buying experiences, rather than things, fosters feelings of connection

We live in lonely times. Though we all have our ways of getting through, many of us turn to buying things as a coping strategy for loneliness; a fact that corporations are all too aware of. So much so, in fact, that research has shown that since the pandemic began, there's been an uptick in brands advertising their products as ways to 'attain well-being'.

While it's easy to say you won't find company at the bottom of a receipt, research has shown a link between purchases we make when we're lonely and a sense of connection. Further studies have also suggested that experiential purchases are much better at dispelling negative, disconnected feelings than others.

Writing in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Amit Kumar and colleagues share further evidence that we may want to prioritise experiences, not belongings, when succumbing to retail therapy. Through their latest experiments, they find that experiential purchases not only provide more of a sense of connection to those around us than materialistic ones, but can make us feel more connected to humanity as a whole.

In the team's first experiments, participants listed either the most significant experiential or material purchase they had made in the last five years. They were then prompted to imagine meeting someone who had made the same purchase, and asked to indicate how similar they felt to that hypothetical person. Those in the control condition were simply asked to state how much kinship they would feel in conversation with a stranger.

Participants felt significantly more similar to someone who had made the same experiential or material purchase to them than controls did to a stranger they knew nothing about — any shared purchase seemed to foster some level of social connection. However, those who made the same experiential purchase felt more connected and a higher sense of kinship than those who had simply bought the same item.

Experiential purchases, then, seem able to take us out of our bubble, and lead us to more readily embrace people with similar experiences. But what about those who haven't shared our experience?

In two further experiments, participants were once again asked to describe a significant purchase in either category, reflecting on the emotions it had evoked. They then filled out a scale on general social connectedness, indicating how much they agreed with statements such as "I feel disconnected from the world around me." Across both studies, participants who reflected on experiential purchases reported a greater "sense of connection to humanity" than those who thought about a material one.

Reflecting on different kinds of purchases also affected how much participants wanted to engage in social or non-social activities. Those who had made experiential purchases were more likely to want to engage in socially connecting activities than lone activities, suggesting that experiential purchases can not only be socially connective in and of themselves, but that they may also drive us to seek out further connection.

In the final study described, participants were given $25 to make either an experiential purchase, such as a meal in a restaurant or a concert ticket, or material purchase. One week later, participants who made an experiential purchase reported feeling significantly more socially connected than those who made a material purchase; they shared that their purchases involved other people more, and considered their buys to be overall more enriching than material purchases.

These results offer a pretty solid recommendation to favour experiences over material goods. Focusing on experiential purchases may, therefore, be the way to go if you want to spend your money in a way that could help you feel a little more connected. It's worth remembering, though, the old adage that money can't buy happiness — and that some experiences, including those that make us feel close to others, cost nothing at all.

Read the paper in full:

Kumar, A., Mann, T. C., & Gilovich, T. (2024). The Aptly Buried "I" in Experience: Experiential Purchases Promote More Social Connection Than Material Purchases. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 37(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2376