Our Things and Our Hearts
A mid-nineteenth century primitive step-back cupboard sits in our great room. Its original paint, a mixture of blueberries and buttermilk, is still vivid, as are the mouse holes in back, the gift of early farmhouse occupants. We remember the day the New Market, Maryland dealer delivered it, a kindness we suspect generated partly by his need to make sure we would treasure it as he had. If our house burned down, we would be the first to say the only thing that matters is that we survived, but that would be a lie. Our lives are also connected with our things and the stories surrounding them.
We paid $850 for that cupboard in the mid-70s but just try to pry it away now. This is the endowment effect: we endow things with value because we’ve become emotionally attached to them. In a classic experiment, people given a Swiss chocolate bar were unwilling to trade it for a coffee mug; those given a coffee mug would not trade it for a Swiss chocolate bar. The endowment effect explains why, when we go to sell our home, we think it’s worth a lot more than a buyer may be willing to pay for our house.
We didn’t create the cupboard; we just chose it. But choosing builds emotional attachment too. In an experiment, participants rated possible vacation spots. After rating a long list of them, they were given pairs of choices they had rated exactly the same and asked to pick which vacation they wanted. Brain scans showed they inflated the value (more activation of the brain’s dopamine reward system) of the one they chose and deflated the value of the one they did not, even though they previously rated them equally.
Our things take on added importance if we create them –even when it doesn’t take much work. In the 1950s, Pillsbury marketed a cake mix that just required water, assuming busy people would appreciate it. Sales were disappointing. So they changed it to require the maker to add the eggs, oil and milk. Sales took off. When making the cake required no personal connection, it was hard to feel good about it. Dan Ariely, who recounts this story in The Upside of Irrationality, also coined the “The Ikea Effect” - we like our Ikea furniture because we put our labor into assembling it. Ariely describes an experiment in which some made an origami frog and others just saw one somebody else made. When asked to bid on the frog creation in an auction, those who had made it bid much more.
When making something is difficult, our emotional attachment increases, as is well-known to people as diverse as gardeners, artists and hobbyists of all types. In another version of the origami frog experiment, some participants were given instructions that made assembly difficult. Those who managed to make it anyway valued it much more than those given easy-to-follow instructions.
Ideas are things too, and we like them better when they’re ours. Employees see this when the boss ignores their idea and later, unaware of his earlier rejection, announces it as his own brilliant discovery. Social science confirms that a great way to gain commitment to an effort is to involve people in shaping it. In a psychology experiment, participants were asked to look at a problem and propose a solution. Others were asked to look at the same problem but evaluate a solution given them. In every case, people rated their own solution as more practical, likely to succeed and worth more of their time and money than a solution someone else gave.
We’re also attached to our beliefs since they’re connected to our values. In The Believing Brain, Michael Shermer suggests that the “longer we hold a belief, the more we have invested in it; the more publicly committed we are to it, the more we endow it with value and the less likely we are to give it up." This passionate attachment can lead to world-changing progress, but it can also lead to disaster when we ignore or attack those with different beliefs.
I like to think I’m a rational person who can stand apart from my things, ideas and beliefs, putting them in proper context. Yet these are stored not just in my home and head but in my heart. In the film Witness, police detective Harrison Ford is recovering in the home of an Amish boy who witnessed a murder by corrupt police officers, who then shot Ford. In deference to the family, Ford takes the bullets out of his gun. The grandfather sees his grandson up the firearm. Explaining why the Amish abhor guns, he tells him “What you take into your hand, you take into your heart.”
We enter and leave the world with nothing. What we gather in between shapes who we are, the richness of our lives and how we treat others. The things in our lives are much more than things. We should choose carefully what we take into our hearts.
Photo Credit: Carol Donsky Newell
