Overcollecting: the psychological mindset

Overcollecting: the psychological mindset

Author: Scott Manning

According to Dan Ariely in his book Predictably Irrational there is a psychological mindset in us that tells us to keep our stuff. We hate throwing away our old memories and stay attached to things that we do not even bother to use or look at anymore. In his study he proves the ‘endowment effect’. This effect is when the owner overvalues the proprietary he owns, e.g. when the owner of a concert ticket only wants to sell it to a higher price that he previously bought the ticket for or for a house. Emotional attachment comes into play. Of course we can argue that the market price plays a role in this, because for instance with the concert ticket. When the concert is sold out people can ask for a higher price for the ticket than they original paid for. Ownership of an item is not the only psychological mindset we have. We can also suffer from the influence of procrastination whereby we already experience like we own the item. Eventually this leads to the option attachment, whereby we like to keep doors open and therefore we can’t close older doors. One solution to these psychological effects is to have additional storage space . With self storage we can keep owning an item until like forever. Of course we can also sell our stuff at a garage sale, but that’s against our psychological nature. The way to tackle this is to become aware of our psychological nature and try to fight it. However, unfortunately I have not met a single person who accomplished this 100%.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/collecting-articles/overcollecting-the-psychological-mindset-1315299.html
About the Author:Scott Manning is a marketing specialist at Shurgard self storage . He has expertise on both online and offline marketing. Shurgard is a storage company whereby people and companies can hire space.