New Delhi, Feb. 7: In the pursuit of happiness, money spent on even short-lasting experiences may yield higher dividends than spending on material goods, a new study by US psychologists has suggested.

The study, presented today at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in Tampa, Florida, has shown that buying experiences contribute to greater and possibly longer-lasting happiness than the purchase of possessions.

The findings bolster evidence from earlier research that expenditure on a movie or a visit to a coffee shop, or holiday travel is likely to produce higher levels of happiness than material goods — whether it’s jewellery, clothes, electronics or cars.

“The happiness appears to outlast the duration of the experience,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at the San Francisco State University and principal investigator of the study.

His findings add evidence to an idea long articulated by philosophers and in literature but corroborated six years ago through a series of studies by two independent US-based psychologists.

In 2003, psychologists Thomas Gilovitch from Cornell University and Leaf Van Boven from the University of Colorado at Boulder had shown that experiences make people happier because they are more open to positive reinterpretations and contribute more to successful social relationships.

“In our new study, we have for the first time tested the mechanisms underlying purchase choice and happiness,” Howell said.

“One mechanism is that experience facilitates close social bonds. But experience also has the effect of making people feel more alive — invigorated,” Howell told The Telegraph over the phone.

Howell and a graduate student, Graham Hill, asked 175 volunteers between the ages of 19 and 50 years to respond to questions about whether and how recent purchases might have had an effect on their levels of happiness.

In this group, 75 had bought experiences and 79 material goods. The results showed that experience produces more happiness irrespective of the amount spent or income of the buyer.

The researchers believe that experiences provide memory capital — or good memories. “People get less bored with happy memories because they tend to focus on peak emotional experiences and how experiences end,” Howell said.

In their previous work, Gilovitch and Van Boven had found not only that thinking about experiences makes people happier than thinking about material possessions, but that they also think about their experiences more often. The earlier study had been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers have cautioned that their results do not in any way suggest that material possessions do not make people happy. “Experiences tend to maximise happiness. People who bought goods were also happy, but people who bought experiences were happier,” Howell said.

Not all purchases may be neatly classified as goods or experiences. A book may be purchased but the act of reading it may also yield a great experience.

“We would have classified a book as a material item. But we would like to better examine items that can provide an experience,” Howell said.

Future research may need to investigate the role of personality. Some individuals may prefer reading as an experience than an outing.