Do read the whole thing, but I loved the last 3 paragraphs: A final suggestion for building gratitude comes from new research by Thomas Gilovich, a professor of psychology at Cornell University. For years, Dr. Gilovich’s work has shown that people are happier when they spend their money on experiences, like a vacation or a dinner out, than when they spend on material things, like a new TV. Now he has found that the same goes for gratitude: People report feeling more grateful for experiential purchases than for material purchases. (Disclosure: Dr. Gilovich received funding for his gratitude research through the center we run at UC Berkeley.) What’s more, when Dr. Gilovich and his team analyzed the reviews that people leave on various consumer websites, they found that people generally indicate more gratitude when writing about an experience (e.g., on Yelp or TripAdvisor) than when writing about a material good (e.g., on Amazon). This offers an important lesson about gratitude, and an important lesson for how we spend our money this holiday season. It suggests that spending money isn’t necessarily antithetical to gratitude and happiness. What matters is how you spend it—and that you take a moment to give thanks for what you have.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 20:15:42 +0000
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