# The Psychology of Stuff and Things



## making_art (Mar 7, 2016)

The psychology of stuff and things
Christian Jarrett on our lifelong relationship with objects
The Psychologist
August 2013
Vol.26 (pp.560-565)

"A man?s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his. William James." (The Principles of Psychology, 1890) 

Stuff everywhere. Bags, books, clothes, cars, toys, jewellery, furniture, iPads. If we?re relatively affluent, we?ll consider a lot of it ours. More than mere tools, luxuries or junk, our possessions become extensions of the self. We use them to signal to ourselves, and others, who we want to be and where we want to belong. And long after we?re gone, they become our legacy. Some might even say our essence lives on in what once we made or owned....

*The future* 
Our relationship with our stuff is in the midst of great change. Dusty music and literary collections are being rehoused in the digital cloud. Where once we expressed our identity through fashion preferences and props, today we can cultivate an online identity with a carefully constructed homepage. We no longer have to purchase an item to associate ourselves with it, we can simply tell the world via Twitter or Facebook about our preferences. The self has become extended, almost literally, into technology, with Google acting like a memory prosthetic. In short, our relationship with our things, possessions and brands remains as important as ever, it?s just the nature of the relationship is changing.

Researchers and people in general are gradually adjusting. The psychology of our stuff is becoming more inter-disciplinary, with new generations building on the established research conducted by consumer psychologists. For her thesis completed this year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amber Cushing ? an information scientist ? interviewed people aged 18 to 67, finding that the younger participants readily saw their digital possessions as extensions of themselves, much as older generations see their physical things.

Twenty-five years after he published his seminal work on objects and the ?extended self?, Russell Belk has composed an update: ?The extended self in a digital world,? currently under review. ?The possibilities for self extensions have never been so extensive,? he says.

*See link in title or PDF attached for full article.*


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