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Cited by 1,195

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

To Do or to Have? That Is the Question.

Open access
Van Boven, Leaf, Gilovich, Thomas·2003·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Abstract

Do experiences make people happier than material possessions? In two surveys, respondents from various demographic groups indicated that experiential purchases-those made with the primary intention of acquiring a life experience--made them happier than material purchases. In a follow-up laboratory experiment, participants experienced more positive feelings after pondering an experiential purchase than after pondering a material purchase. In another experiment, participants were more likely to anticipate that experiences would make them happier than material possessions after adopting a temporally distant, versus a temporally proximate, perspective. The discussion focuses on evidence that experiences make people happier because they are more open to positive reinterpretations, are a more meaningful part of one's identity, and contribute more to successful social relationships.

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Crossref · 10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193

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Metadata

Authors
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T.
Venue
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Published
2003
Volume
85
Issue
6
Pages
1193-1202
ISSN
  • 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1315
OpenAlex
W2119647950
Cited by
1,195
References
9
FWCI
7.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: To Do or to Have? That Is the Question. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193
The paper
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To Do or to Have? That Is the Question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1193

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.