Consuming passions
Dan Ariely–author of Predictably Irrational, professor of psychology, business, economics, and medicine at Duke University, winner of the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine, and all-around standup guy–has an good post up about “conceptual consumption,” or the ways ideas and emotions play into our purchasing behavior.
Most of this is familiar to me (behavioral economics is increasingly a passion of mine), but here’s a new one:
One study of how memories influence consumption explored the phenomenon whereby people who have truly enjoyed an experience, such as a special evening out, sometimes prefer not to repeat it. We might expect that they would want to experience the physical consumption of such an evening again; but by forgoing repeat visits, they are preserving their ability to consume the pure memory – the concept – of that evening forever, without the risk of polluting it with a less-special evening.
Have you ever done this? I can’t think of any time that I have–although I did explore similar sentiments once, regarding Boston’s Public Garden.
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There was a semester in college where I went out almost every weekend. That semester taught me that better times are had when going out is a rare occasion, rather than the weekend routine. After one memorable weekend, I tried to recreate it the next week, only to be disappointed. And then, instead of remembering the first wonderful weekend, all I could recall was how the second was a failure. Going out every weekend blurred time; all weekends ran together so that at the end of the semester, I had difficulty extracting memories of particular weekends. After experiencing a semester like that (one where time flew by and I couldn’t really pinpoint any highlights), I’ve learned not to try and make every weekend special, but rather to savor the few wonderful weekends when I socialize and see friends. It makes me cherish the time I spend with them, rather than take their company for granted.
This phenomenon is why I will never listen to the Chinese Democracy album.
(Perhaps this is also partly why people like tribute bands. The songs are honed to be accurate album replicas, sometimes right down to between song banter, and no one is trying to push their new music on you.)