Revisiting the Differential Centrality of Experiential and Material Purchases to the Self: Replication and Extension of Carter and Gilovich (2012)

Carter and Gilovich (2012) investigated the centrality of experiential and material purchases to the self and concluded people have stronger associations with their experiential than their material purchases. In a pre-registered experiment with a US American Amazon Mechanical Turk sample, (N=743), we successfully replicated their Studies 3A, 3B, 3C, and 5. Experiential purchases were perceived as more reflective of true-self than material purchases for both self (d=0.65[0.57,0.73]) and for strangers (d=0.88[0.80,0.96]), and that when meeting a new person, information about experiential purchases was considered to be more insightful (d=1.13[1.04,1.22]), useful (d=1.14[1.05,1.23]), and fun to talk about (d=1.96[1.83,2.08]) than material purchases. Self-concept was more strongly associated with experiential purchases than with material purchases (d=0.39[0.25,0.54]), and that there was a negative association between experiential purchase satisfaction and the willingness to exchange memory (r=-.34[-.43,-.24]) (all effects above were p<.001). We added an extension examining change in evaluations of material and experiential purchases over time and found that current evaluations were more negative than past evaluations, yet to a lesser extent for experiential compared to material purchases. Materials, data, and code are available on: https://osf.io/v2w5h/