Neuroscience of selling your stuff
We sometimes say that it "hurts" to part with our stuff even if it's junk, and we know it's junk. Behavioral scientists call it the endowment effect, a theory that people put higher values on things once they own them. Turns out though that it actually does hurt to sell something you own, and it has nothing to do with overvaluing. Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania psychologists recreated the endowment effect in volunteers while scanning their brains with MRI. From Nature News:
If the reason for the endowment effect came from the products being overvalued by their owners, (professor Brian) Knutson’s team expected to see a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbus change during the test. It didn’t, “whether buying or selling, the activation in the nucleus accumbus looked the same”, says (co-author professor Scott) Rick.Link
But others part of the brain, the insula, which has a role in the experience of pain, and the greater mesial prefrontal cortex became activated when the subjects contemplated selling one of their items. If they had ranked that item as one they particularly liked, the change in the insula was greater.
According to this research, this is because of loss aversion, says Rick. “It is not because people are overplaying the positive [aspects of a possession].” Rather, we just become attached to objects we own — so much so that it takes a lot to convince us to part with them.
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attachment, in this sense, means the object acts as a memory catalyst, and the pain can be equated to a loss of those memories, which could actually turn out to be true.
that drive you took with aunt zelda as a nine-year-old that you hated? what, you didn't go on a drive with aunt zelda? think again...
after countless moves in the past 20 years, you're finally emptying your junk trunk. as you get to the bottom you see a red card. you've seen that card a kajillion times but never given it a second thought, thinking it a stray from some deck that once hung out in your junk trunk. well, as you pick it up and turn it over to see a joker, a naked joker, a flood of memories return.
you remember a trip you took with your crazy aunt zelda and how you hated her for it and everything about the one-hour trip that seemed like four days. then you remember the gas station you stopped at. and the lunatic who approached the car. who handed you a card. the joker you hold in you hand now. and your entire memory is altered to what actually happened that day. your aunt zelda was taking you to see your grandparents. the last time you'd ever see them.
maybe you'll remember the trip with aunt zelda without that card. but more likely you'll remember the funeral of your grandparents and the last time you saw them. but you won't remember who brought you there for that last time. because your mom used to always take you to visit them. but not that day. but your mom did bring you home the last day you saw your grandparents. who died in their sleep the next week. how it was your aunt zelda who insisted on the trip that day when you visited her while your mother was "out of town."
memories can get mangled. objects can often set them right.
or something.
i this, and i'm never letting go
er, that was
i <3 this, and i'm never letting go
A few years back I decided to get rid of my first computer, an original IBM PC. I had vague hopes of waiting long enough for it to be collectible, but realized that that could be a decade or more.
So, when the local Best Buy had a recycling round-up, I hauled it out of the closet and collected everything associated with it. (I still had the original box and manuals!) Put it and some other, much less loved machines in the back of my car, drove to Best Buy, and told the recycling people to take everything in the back seat. I deliberately didn't look in the rear view mirror or which pile the box ended up on.
Really painful. I had a lot of fun with that machine. When I feel bad about ditching it I entertain myself by imagining a collector finding it, but I'm sure it was torn up for scrap.
But -- cruel joke -- they forgot to take the keyboard, which I'd carefully packed in its own original box. Built of metal, with wonderful clicky keys; you could beat a wolverine to death with it.* And totally useless because it doesn't work with anything newer than an IBM AT.
*Sigh*. Of course I kept it.
* Assuming you caught it napping.
Y'know, anyone with a two-year-old child could have told you this already.
'Endowment effect' has a very different meaning in my social circle.
animal (pet) hoarding
I'd share my opinion on this, but I feel a twinge.
@ Stefan Jones:
You can get those keyboards converted to USB. They'll still be missing the "Windows" key, but that thing's fucking useless to begin with.
attachment causes suffering. one way or another, just ask a Buddhist, this is not some new truth discovered by science but an old wisdom validated for a science-centric society.
@#10
no, attachment causes meaning. without attachment there is no meaning.
yes, without meaning there is no suffering, and without attachment there is no suffering, because without attachment, there is nothing.
consider
* music -- one note has no value without another note, alone it is not high or low or anything. one beat cannot a rhythm make as rhythm is the relationship, it is the attachment between beats.
* mathematics -- one point has zero dimension, no value, does not exist without relation to another point.
#10, you impute science for disassociating society from old wisdom. your comment shows the folly of reliance on rhetorical bits of old wisdom.
you suggest we "just ask a buddhist," but the "middle path" principle mitigates a simple "attachment causes suffering." i quote "The Buddhist Middle Path is a path of compassion and of wisdom. Wisdom requires balance ...." -- Professor Asoka Bandarage at the Conference on ‘Civilizations and the Challenge for Peace: Obstacles and Opportunities,’ United Nations General Assembly
attachment is a tool which can be used for suffering or for compassion. has boing boing not taught us the folly of attacking tools?
here in seattle recently, the 14th dalai lama shared lessons of his buddhism during the Seeds of Compassion gathering. his guidance was intended for both rational people and for people of faith. from him i gathered:
compassion requires attachment; further, "compassion" is mindful attachment in a word.
if you ask a buddhist believer about attachment and the neuroscience of selling your stuff, he or she may reply with clichés such as "attachment causes suffering." if you ask a thinker who respects buddhist mindfulness, you may learn that attachment neither causes nor resolves suffering, while it can be used to do both.
I disagree. Compassion doesn't require attachment. Attachment (raga) really refers to oneself and one's attachments to self-image, identity, possessions and relationships as expressions of an imaginary self-truth. Detachment sounds nasty. Releasing attachment is more about allowing people and things to be what they are, to express their own dharma. In doing that, it is possible to feel perfect love and compassion for all that is, because those feelings are uncluttered by the filter of self. Attachment and revulsion (dvesha) are just not great words to express the concepts. Expectation would probably be a better translation.