Experience a new type of gift

THE TIME of the year is soon approaching where our family has back-to-back birthdays.
A time for celebration when you are turning four and eight, and a time for thinking "WTF, I turned 30 only a few minutes ago, someone is playing tricks on me", when you are turning 42.

My hubby and I have been trying to figure out how we reduce the amount of stuff in our lives, which includes the stuff we give at birthdays. In the past I have spent hours thinking of the perfect present to give my boys. It is somewhat disheartening when they only play with the toy for about a quarter of the time it has taken me to purchase the damn thing.

So what is the alternative to presents at birthday and Christmas time? I have gathered some ideas based on some interesting research. Research shows many people misjudge what is going to bring them lasting happiness. They think that accumulating more stuff will make them happier for a longer time, because stuff lasts longer than a one-off experience does, such as a holiday or concert.

But a psychology professor at Cornell University (Dr Thomas Gilovich) has shown that, over time, experiences can out trump stuff on the happiness scale. This is because we adapt to stuff pretty quickly and the novelty wears off. But we tend not to adapt in the same way to experiences.

In a study that investigated how adaptation affects happiness, people were asked to self-report their happiness with major stuff and experiential purchases. Initially, their happiness with those purchases was ranked about the same. But, over time, people's satisfaction with stuff they bought went down, whereas their satisfaction with experiences they spent money on went up.

It's counterintuitive to think that the stuff you can keep forever doesn't keep you as happy, for as long, as a one-off experience does. However, because stuff is always there, we just get used to it, the initial novelty wears off. But an experience can be retold and this reminiscing helps to enhance and prolong the actual activity. Even experiences that aren't so pleasant at the time can turn out to be good once you get to joke about it with friends afterwards or see it as a character-building exercise.

Another reason is that shared experiences connect us more to other people than stuff does. You're much more likely to feel connected to someone you've done the Tongariro Crossing with than someone who also happens to own an Apple TV.

And even if someone wasn't with you when you had a particular experience, you're much more likely to bond over a snowboarding experience than you are over owing the same type of car.

People also have a bad habit of comparing their stuff (houses, cars, clothes, etc). Research has shown that people are much less prone to compare experiences than they are in comparing their stuff. The tendency of keeping up with the Joneses tends to be more pronounced for stuff than for experiential purchases.

After reading the above research I feel a bit more confident about giving my kids an experience for a birthday or Christmas present than more stuff. I will be thinking more and more about how I can sell it to my kids that an experience is worth way more than a new Minecraft character.

A registered psychologist with a masters in applied psychology, Wanganui mother-of-two Kristen Hamling is studying for a PhD in wellbeing at Auckland University of Technology.