Why Are We so Attached to What We Do?
If you’ve ever tried to clean your closet or garage, you know that getting rid of things isn’t easy , even if you never use them. This is what makes us so attached to things and how it makes vacation difficult.
From childhood, we form a connection with the things around us, especially with what belongs to us personally. This TED video explains three reasons we are attached.
- Endowment Effect : You value something more when you have it. For example, if you value two items the same, but own one and have the ability to trade it for another, you are setting a higher value on the item you already own and you don’t want to trade it.
- Sense of Self : We often include our things as part of our identity and sense of self. You probably have a favorite shirt or mug and prefer them to similar things because you subconsciously view them as part of yourself.
- Ownership connection : we imbue into our things an essence that we believe is unique to the things we own. They are special to us because they belong to us, and when given a copy of an item, we prefer the original. This applies to items belonging to our family (heirlooms), celebrities or other famous people. We attribute higher value to these items because of who they belonged to, although the items themselves are often not all that unique.
Of course, how attached you are to your things depends on the culture you grew up in, but almost everyone experiences some degree of connection with their things. Watch the video above to learn more about each effect.
Why are we so attached to what we do? | TED-Ed (YouTube)