Leaf Van Boven, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied the effects that different types of spending have on happiness, hypothesizes that this might be in part due to the fact that, whereas possessions tend to encourage people to compare themselves to one another (e.g., who has the nicest car or television) and thus divide them, experiences bring people together. They’re “a better source of entertaining conversation than material possessions,” according to Van Boven, and they lead to more enduring pleasure and satisfaction.
