Money & Happiness Quizzes | Personality Tests

The study you completed tests our prediction that happiness matters more to people when they decide to buy life experiences, as opposed to material items.

In this study, we prompted you to imagine six buying decisions (e.g., "imagine that you have the opportunity to buy a new watch"), three of which were material and three experiential, and to rate the importance of happiness in your purchase decision (i.e., "how important would it be that the watch contributed to your overall happiness in life?").

In the graph below, from the six buying decisions, we report the average importance people ascribe to happiness when buying life experiences and material items. The degree to which happiness is important to you when buying material items is represented by the first green bar and degree to which happiness is important to you when buying life experiencesis represented by the second green bar. The degree to which happiness is important to the average person when buying material items is represented by the first purple bar and degree to which happiness is important to the average person when buying life experiences is represented by the second purple bar.

We are still in the process of collecting data, but if our prediction is right, then the second purple bar will be higher than the first purple bar. This will mean that happiness is more important to people when they are deciding to purchase a life experience than a material item. When is happiness more important to you? If your first green bar is shorter than you second green bar, then happiness is more important to you when you are buying a life experience as well.

Here is something to think about: spending choices are also indicative of what you value in life. Experiential buyers have been shown to place a higher emphasis on the pleasurable aspects of life, such as sensation-seeking, happiness, and the desire to establish warm relationships with others. You can find out how you score on these values by taking the List of Values Scale.To learn more about experiential purchasing, you can read this CNN article

Do you have ideas on improving this study? Or did you encounter any difficulties in answering the questions? Click here to send a message to the creators of this study.

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