Publications

Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2024). Let it go: How exaggerating the reputational costs of revealing negative information encourages secrecy in relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 126(6), 1052-1083. [click here to view]

Keeping negative interpersonal secrets can diminish wellbeing, yet people nevertheless keep negative information secret from friends, family, and loved ones to protect their own reputations. Twelve experiments suggest these reputational concerns are systematically miscalibrated, creating a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. In hypothetical scenarios (Experiments 1, S1, & S2), laboratory experiments (Experiments 2 & 6), and field settings (Experiments 3 & 4), those who imagined revealing, or who actually revealed, negative information they were keeping secret expected to be judged significantly more harshly than recipients expected to judge, or actually judged, them. We theorized that revealers’ pessimistic expectations stem not only from the cognitive accessibility of negative information (Experiment S3), but also from a perspective gap such that the negative outcomes of disclosing this information, compared to positive outcomes, are more accessible for prospective revealers than for recipients. Consistent with this mechanism, revealers’ expectations were better calibrated when directed to focus on positive thoughts, or when they considered revealing positive information (Experiments 5, 6, & S4). Revealers’ miscalibrated expectations matter because they can guide decisions about whether to reveal information or conceal it as a secret (Experiment S5). As predicted, calibrating revealers’ expectations increased their willingness to reveal negative information to others (Experiment 7), suggesting that miscalibrated fears of others’ judgment create a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. Overestimating the reputational costs of disclosing negative information might leave people carrying a heavier burden of secrecy than would be optimal for their own wellbeing.

Kumar, A., Mann, T. C., & Gilovich, T. (2024). The aptly buried “I” in experience: Experiential purchases promote more social connection than material purchases. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 37(2), e2376. [click here to view]

Experiential purchases (focused on doing rather than having) provide more satisfaction than material goods. Here we examine a different downstream consequence of spending money on experiences: fostering social connection. Consumers reported feeling more kinship with someone who had made a similar experiential purchase than someone who had made a similar material purchase—a result tied to the greater centrality of experiences to one’s identity. This greater sense of connection that experiences provide applied even when someone else had made a similar, but superior purchase. Participants also reported feeling more connected to others in general, not just those who have made the same purchase, when reflecting on experiential consumption—and these feelings of connection were expressed in a greater desire to engage in social activities when participants consider their experiential purchases than when they consider their material purchases. Together, these results demonstrate that experiential consumption enhances people’s social connection quite broadly.

Epley, N., Kumar, A., Dungan, J., & Echelbarger, M. (2023). A prosociality paradox: How miscalibrated social cognition creates a misplaced barrier to prosocial action. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32(1), 33-41. [click here to view]

Behaving prosocially can increase wellbeing among both those performing a prosocial act as well as those receiving it, and yet people may experience some reluctance to engage in direct prosocial actions. We review emerging evidence suggesting that miscalibrated social cognition may create a psychological barrier that keeps people from behaving as prosocially as would be optimal for both their own and others’ wellbeing. Across a variety of interpersonal behaviors, those performing prosocial actions tend to underestimate how positively their recipients will respond. These miscalibrated expectations stem partly from divergent perspectives between prosocial actors and recipients, with actors attending relatively more to the competency of their actions and recipients attending relatively more to the warmth conveyed by them. Failing to fully appreciate the positive impact of prosociality on others may keep people from behaving more prosocially in their daily lives, to the detriment of both their own and others’ wellbeing.

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2023). A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(1), 236-252. [click here to view]

Performing random acts of kindness increases happiness in both givers and receivers, but we find that givers systematically undervalue their positive impact on recipients. In both field and laboratory settings (Experiments 1a-2b), those performing an act of kindness reported how positive they expected recipients would feel and recipients reported how they actually felt. From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing a random act of kindness consistently underestimated how positive their recipients would feel, thinking their act was of less value than recipients perceived it to be. Givers’ miscalibrated expectations are driven partly by an egocentric bias in evaluations of the act itself (Experiment 3). Whereas recipients’ positive reactions are enhanced by the warmth conveyed in a kind act, givers’ expectations are relatively insensitive to the warmth conveyed in their action. Underestimating the positive impact of a random act of kindness also leads givers to underestimate the behavioral consequences their prosociality will produce in recipients through indirect reciprocity (Experiment 4). We suggest that givers’ miscalibrated expectations matter because they can create a barrier to engaging in prosocial actions more often in everyday life (Experiments 5a-5b), which may result in people missing out on opportunities to enhance both their own and others’ wellbeing.

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2023). Undersociality is unwise. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 33(1), 199-212. [click here to view]

Wise decisions are often guided by an accurate understanding of the expected values of different possible choices. In social contexts, wisdom comes from understanding how others are likely to respond to one’s actions, enabling people to make choices that maximize both their own and others’ outcomes. Our research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create a systematic barrier to wiser decisions in social life. From expressing appreciation to offering support to performing acts of kindness, this program of research indicates that decisions to engage with others are driven by how people expect a recipient to respond, but that people consistently underestimate how positively others will respond to their other-oriented actions. Because connecting with others consistently increases people’s own wellbeing, miscalibrated social cognition may lead to undersociality: being overly reluctant to reach out and connect with others. Miscalibrated expectations about social engagement can create markets for products that help people overcome these barriers in order to consume their time, money, and effort more wisely.

Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2023). Understanding undersociality: Intentions, impressions, and interactions. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 33(1), 221-225. [click here to view]

Ratner, Kim, and Wu (2023) and Silver and Small (2023) raise deeply interesting questions about the broad consequences of increasing sociality, about people’s ability to anticipate the outcomes of sociality, and about broader issues people may be considering when thinking of connecting with another person. We focus this response on the potential role of intentions and anticipated impressions in affecting undersociality, as well as the possibility of interactions that could moderate the gap between people’s expectations of social engagement and their actual experiences. Many unanswered and important questions remain in need of critical empirical attention. We encourage future research that provides a better understanding of undersociality by focusing on intentions, impressions, and interactions.

Kumar, A. (2022). The unmatchable brightness of doing: Experiential consumption facilitates greater satisfaction than spending on material possessions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 46, 101343. [click here to view]

Living in a consumerist society can afford material abundance, but these gains can bring psychological costs. A developed literature suggests experiential purchases (such as trips or outdoor recreation) represent a more promising route to enduring consumer happiness than the consumption of material goods. The satisfaction from experiences extends across a rather broad time course, including the anticipation of experiential consumption, in-the-moment consumption, and retrospection. This review discusses the underlying reasons for why these effects occur, additional downstream consequences of consuming experiences, and potential directions for future work. This extensive program of research provides a simple lesson people can apply to improve wellbeing in daily life: shifting spending in the direction of doing rather than having would likely be psychologically wise.

Kardas, M., Kumar, A. & Epley, N. (2022). Overly shallow? Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367-398. [click here to view]

People may want deep and meaningful relationships with others, but may also be reluctant to engage in the deep and meaningful conversations with strangers that could create those relationships. We hypothesized that people systematically underestimate how caring and interested distant strangers are in one’s own intimate revelations and that these miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier to deeper conversations. As predicted, conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and created more connectedness and happiness, than the participants themselves expected (Experiments 1a-5). Participants were especially prone to overestimate how awkward deep conversations would be compared to shallow conversations (Experiments 2-5). Notably, they also felt more connected to deep conversation partners than shallow conversation partners after having both types of conversations (Experiments 6a-b). Systematic differences between expectations and experiences arouse because participants expected others to care less about their disclosures in conversation than others actually did (Experiments 1a, 1b, 4a, 4b, 5, 6a). As a result, participants more accurately predicted the outcomes of their conversations when speaking with close friends, family, or partners whose care and interest is more clearly known (Experiment 5). Miscalibrated expectations about others matter because they guide decisions about which topics to discuss in conversation, such that more calibrated expectations encourage deeper conversation (Experiments 7a-7b). Misunderstanding others can encourage overly shallow interactions.

Kumar, A. (2022). Some things aren’t better left unsaid: Interpersonal barriers to gratitude expression and prosocial engagement. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 156-160. [click here to view]

Gratitude promotes wellbeing, but people may not express it even when they feel it. A core aspect of rational behavior is that people make decisions based on the expected value of their actions. While acting on expectations may be rational, the choices one makes may not be optimal if those expectations are misguided. Because people underestimate the benefit and overestimate the cost of expressing gratitude, miscalibrated predictions can create a misplaced barrier to gratitude expression. These mistaken beliefs about interpersonal interactions stem partly from a perspective-based asymmetry between actors and targets. The propensity to undervalue one’s positive impact on others may reflect a broader tendency that undermines prosociality in daily life—to the detriment of one’s own, and others’ wellbeing.

Kumar, A. & Epley, N. (2021). It’s surprisingly nice to hear you: Misunderstanding the impact of communication media can lead to suboptimal choices of how to connect with others. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(3), 595-607. [click here to view]

Positive social connections improve wellbeing. Technology increasingly affords a wide variety of media that people can use to connect with others, but not all media strengthen social connection equally. Optimizing wellbeing therefore requires choosing how to connect with others wisely. We predicted that people’s preferences for communication media would be at least partly guided by the expected costs and benefits of the interaction—specifically, how awkward or uncomfortable the interaction would be and how connected they would feel to their partner—but that people’s expectations would consistently undervalue the overall benefit of more intimate voice-based interactions. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants in a field experiment to reconnect with an old friend either over the phone or email, and by asking laboratory participants to “chat” with a stranger over video, voice, or text-based media. Results indicated that interactions including voice (phone, video chat, voice chat) created stronger social bonds and no increase in awkwardness, compared to interactions including text (email, text chat), but miscalibrated expectations about awkwardness or connection could lead to suboptimal preferences for text-based media. Misunderstanding the consequences of using different communication media could create preferences for media that do not maximize either one’s own or others’ wellbeing.

Kumar, A. & Epley, N. (2020). Type less, talk more. Harvard Business Review. [click here to view]

Modern communication media allow us to exchange information with others using text, voice, and audiovisual cues. But because communication also involves maintaining social relationships that are critical for our happiness, health, and the smooth running of a business, reaching out to others requires deciding how best to do so. And in this regard, the value of voice is key. We recently conducted several experiments that suggest people undervalue the positive relational consequences of using voice relative to text alone, leading them to favor typing rather than talking—a potentially unwise preference.

Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A. & Gilovich, T. (2020). Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 88, 103971. [click here to view]

People derive more satisfaction from experiential purchases (e.g., travel, entertainment, outdoor activities, meals out) than material purchases (e.g., clothing, jewelry, furniture, gadgets), both in prospect and retrospect. Because different types of well-being can have different determinants, we examined whether experiences have the same advantage over possessions in the here-and-now of consumption as they do in anticipation or remembrance. Participants in two large-scale experience-sampling studies were contacted in the midst of consuming an experiential or material purchase and asked about their momentary happiness. Experiential consumption was consistently associated with significantly greater happiness than either non-consumption or the consumption of material goods. In-the-moment happiness, furthermore, was greater for all subcategories of experiential purchases than for any category of material goods. Experiences thus appear to be a more promising route to enhancing well-being than possessions, irrespective of when happiness is measured.

Epley, N. & Kumar, A. (2019). How to design an ethical organization. Harvard Business Review, May-June 2019, 144-150. [click here to view]

From Volkswagen’s emissions fiasco to Wells Fargo’s deceptive sales practices to Uber’s privacy intrusions, corporate scandals are a recurring reality in global business. Compliance programs increasingly take a legalistic approach to ethics that focuses on individual accountability. Yet behavioral science suggests that people are ethically malleable, so creating an ethical culture means thinking about ethics not simply as a belief problem but also as a design problem. The authors suggest four ways to make being good as easy as possible: Connect ethical principles to strategies and policies, keep ethics top of mind, reward ethical behavior through a variety of incentives, and encourage ethical norms in day-to-day practices.

Kumar, A. & Epley, N. (2018). Undervaluing gratitude: Expressers misunderstand the consequences of showing appreciation. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1423-1435. [click here to view]

Expressing gratitude improves well-being for both expressers and recipients, but we suggest an egocentric bias may lead expressers to systematically undervalue its positive impact on recipients in a way that could keep people from expressing gratitude more often in everyday life. Participants in three experiments wrote gratitude letters and then predicted how surprised, happy, and awkward recipients would feel. Expressers significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why they were grateful, overestimated how awkward recipients would feel, and underestimated how positive recipients would feel. Expected awkwardness and mood were both correlated with participants' willingness to express gratitude. Wise decisions are guided by an accurate assessment of the expected value of action. Underestimating the value of prosocial actions, like expressing gratitude, may keep people from engaging in behavior that would maximize their own--and others'--well-being.

Walker, J. T., Kumar, A. & Gilovich, T. (2016). Cultivating gratitude and giving through experiential consumption. Emotion, 16(8), 1126-1136. [click here to view]

Gratitude promotes well-being and prompts pro-social behavior. Here, we examine a novel way to cultivate this beneficial emotion. We demonstrated that two different types of consumption--material consumption (buying for the sake of having) and experiential consumption (buying for the sake of doing)--differentially foster gratitude and giving. In six studies we show that reflecting on experiential purchases (e.g., travel, meals out, tickets to events) inspires more gratitude than reflecting on material purchases (e.g., clothing, jewelry, furniture), and that thinking about experiences leads to more altruistic behavior than thinking about possessions. In Studies 1-2b, we use within-subject and between-subject designs to test our main hypothesis: that people are more grateful for what they've done than what they have. Study 3 finds evidence for this effect in the real world-setting of online customer reviews: Consumers are more likely to spontaneously mention feeling grateful for experiences they have bought than for material goods they have bought. In our final two studies, we show that experiential consumption also makes people more likely to be generous to others. Participants who contemplated a significant experiential purchase behaved more generously toward anonymous others than those who contemplated a significant material purchase. It thus appears that shifting spending towards experiential consumption can improve people's everyday lives as well as the lives of those around them.

Kumar, A. & Gilovich, T. (2016). To do or to have, now or later? The preferred consumption profiles of material and experiential purchases. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 26(2), 169-178. [click here to view]

Extending previous research on the hedonic benefits of spending money on doing rather than having, this paper investigates when people prefer to consume experiential and material purchases. We contend that the preferred timing of consumption tends to be more immediate for things (like clothing and gadgets) than for experiences (like vacations and meals out). First, we examine whether consumers exhibit a stronger preference to delay consumption of experiential purchases compared to material goods. When asked to make choices about their optimal consumption times, people exhibit a relative preference to have now and do later. In the next set of studies, we found that this difference in preferred consumption led participants to opt for a lesser material item now over a superior item later, but to wait for a superior experiential purchase rather than settle for a lesser experience now. This tendency is due to the fact that consumers derive more utility from waiting for experiences than from waiting for possessions. Finally, we provide evidence that these preferences affect people’s real-world decisions about when to consume.

Kumar, A. & Gilovich, T. (2015). Some "thing" to talk about? Differential story utility from experiential and material purchases. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(10), 1320-1331. [click here to view]

Psychological research has shown that experiential purchases (a hike in the woods; a trip to Rome) bring more happiness than material purchases (a designer shirt; a flat-screen television). The research presented in this paper investigates one cause and consequence of this difference: people talk more about their experiences than their possessions and derive more value from doing so. A series of eight studies demonstrate that taking away the ability to talk about experiences (but not material goods) would diminish the enjoyment they bring; that people believe they derive more happiness from talking about experiential purchases; that when given a choice about which of their purchases to talk about, people are more likely to talk about experiential rather than material consumption; and that people report being more inclined to talk about their experiences than their material purchases and derive more hedonic benefits as a result—both in prospect and in retrospect.

Gilovich, T. & Kumar, A. (2015). We’ll always have Paris: The hedonic payoff from experiential and material investments. In M. Zanna and J. Olson (Eds.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 51 (pp. 147-187). New York: Elsevier. [click here to view]

We live in a consumerist society in which large increases in wealth have not brought about corresponding increases in well-being. This has led some to wonder if there are ways people might spend their limited discretionary income to get a better hedonic return on their money. Here we examine the perils of materialism and review a program of research that demonstrates that experiential purchases (such as vacations, concerts, and meals out) tend to bring more lasting happiness than material purchases (such as high-end clothing, jewelry, and electronic gadgets). Compared to possessions, experiences are less prone to hedonic adaptation and we explore how and why the satisfaction they provide endures: by fostering successful social relationships, by becoming a more meaningful part of one’s identity, by being less susceptible to unfavorable and unpleasant comparisons, and by not lending themselves to deflating regrets of action. We also discuss how these hedonic benefits extend to anticipation as well, although people do not always anticipate that experiential consumption tends to provide more enduring satisfaction. We conclude by raising a number of questions about the distinction between experiences and material goods, about potential moderators and individual differences, and about how the overall well-being of society might be advanced by shifting from an overwhelmingly material economy to one that facilitates experiential consumption.

Gilovich, T., Kumar, A. & Jampol, L. (2015). A wonderful life: Experiential consumption and the pursuit of happiness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(1), 152-165. [click here to view]

To live in the developed world is to live in a consumerist society. Although the broader forces that created this society have led to unprecedented material abundance, scholars have maintained that these benefits have come at a significant psychological cost.  An important question, then, is how these psychological costs can be minimized.  With that in mind, we briefly review research showing that people derive more satisfaction from experiential purchases than material purchases. We then summarize the findings of an extensive program of research on the psychological mechanisms that underlie this difference. This research indicates that experiential purchases provide greater satisfaction and happiness because: (1) Experiential purchases enhance social relations more readily and effectively than material goods; (2) Experiential purchases form a bigger part of a person's identity; and (3) Experiential purchases are evaluated more on their own terms and evoke fewer social comparisons than material purchases. It also appears that experiential purchases are less likely to be evaluated in monetary (market exchange) terms. We conclude by discussing how social policy might be altered to take advantage of the greater hedonic return offered by experiential investments, thus advancing societal well-being.

Gilovich, T., Kumar, A. & Jampol, L. (2015). The beach, the bikini, and the best buy: Replies to Dunn and Weidman, and to Schmitt, Brakus, and Zarantonello. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(1), 179-184. [click here to view]

We reply to commentaries on Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol (this issue) by Dunn and Weidman (this issue) and Schmitt, Brakus, and Zarantonello (this issue). We argue that the distinction between material and experiential purchases is meaningful and important, that experiences can be bought, and that our comparisons of the two have not been confounded by factors such as significance, importance, purchase price, or subjective appeal. We further discuss the potential limitations of populations from which we have sampled, and differences in consumer satisfaction across different time frames. We conclude by embracing the fact that our program of research has generated many open questions and by welcoming further empirical attempts to understand the psychological processes and hedonic consequences that attend these two types of purchases.

Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A. & Gilovich, T. (2014). Waiting for merlot: Anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1924-1931. [click here to view]

Experiential purchases (money spent on doing) tend to provide more enduring happiness than material purchases (money spent on having). Although most research to date has focused on the downstream hedonic consequences of these two types of purchases, the present research investigates hedonic differences that occur before consumption. We argue that the act of waiting tends to be more positive for experiences than for possessions. Four studies demonstrate that people derive more happiness from the anticipation of experiential purchases and that waiting for an experience tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting to receive a material good. We find these effects using questionnaires involving a variety of actual purchases, a large-scale experience sampling study, and an archival analysis of news stories about people waiting in line to make a purchase. Consumers derive value from anticipation, and that value tends to be greater for experiential purchases.