What Makes People Collect Things?

[kazinator]

I wasn't into collecting, until I got a really cool list comprehension macro at someone's garage sale. Now stuff is just piling up around me.

[Nadya]

100% guilty of this...

I had 1 - and I was happy. It was nice. It was my favorite thing.

Then I got a 2nd one. Suddenly, I needed more. I needed them all. It felt like Pokemon.

Now I have over 160 of them. Oh god help me...

Knowing not to own 2 of things to avoid collecting more things is nice. It's strange that it seems to only require 2 of some 'thing' to create an urge for a collection. I'll need to start throwing more things out. Pick my favorite of the two and give the other away.

[cortesoft]

What is the 'them' in this case? Just curious.

[marincounty]

I saw an episode of Horders on T.V.. The psychologist and team went to this older gentleman's home and talked him into throwing away his book collection. He mentioned a lot of the books were 1st editions. Know one payed attention to the "crazy" old man.

At the end of the show, one of the hosts was surprised all the books were taken out dumptster by some other crazy Horder.

[emcrazyone]

I can relate. My mother hoards old magazines thinking someday she will need the information in them. She hoards magazines, reader's digest books, you name it.

Before my father died, he kept her in check. Throwing piles of old news papers out. Growing up it was a common scene to hear her yell at him that he threw something out she needed.

My mother use to write a news letter for a government agency. She is a very good, articulate writer. She is so good that one time I was suffering through a creative writing college course, came home got some help from my mom, and the college professor told me I had a career in journalism if I didn't like engineering. It was a family joke for many years.

I have a little bit of this myself. My wife yells at me to get rid of things. History repeats itself... I take broken electronics apart for their parts. Kids toys break, toy gets put on my work bench. I eventually get around to taking it apart to harvest parts like LCD panels, MMC slots, etc...

I'm getting better. I realize some when I blow dust off of it, it's time to throw out.

I think it's a mental thought process that what you have has some value to you. Not like value as in it is worth something to someone else but a cost saving thing. I would rather use a harvested MMC or LED than go to Digikey and buy a bag of them and wait a day or few for it to arrive. The value is in having instant access to it while on a project. At least that is how it is for me.

[anabis]

Another psychological bias exploitable by Free To Play games?

As an added bonus, if items A..E can be randomly obtained on equal probability, getting the last item is harder then instinct suggest. Thus, "Complete Gacha" lead to 1k $ spends.

[WalterBright]

I collect things. I regard it as a mental OCD defect and try hard not to add to them. Sometimes I have been able to dispose of one or another collection, and have never regretted it.

[nasalgoat]

For anyone thinking of starting a collection, I suggest not picking heavy ones.

I collect heavy, hard to move things like cars and pinball machines, and my life would be a lot simpler if it was stamps.

[fufufishie]

Explains my Amiibo addiction.

[contingencies]

Does this work for spouses?

[libredroid]

>April 1, 2015

[whoiskevin]

"People are more likely to build a collection of something once they possess two of them."

Really? Did they spend a lot of time studying that?

[icebraining]

Research isn't just about finding new and unintuitive effects, its also about scientifically confirming and measuring what we know - or think we know - intuitively.

[coldtea]

Why, did you knew beforehand what the most common "tipping point" was for collecting stuff?

If anything, 2 is quite surprising.

[jldugger]

Think of the flip side: you have two of a thing. You have three options:

1. Eliminate one from your possession by selling, gifting or trashing it. 2. Just have two of a thing. 3. Get a third, and call it a collection.

The research implies that few people like option 2, and prefer option 3 to option 1.

[burnte]

After reading that, through a great deal of time and effort I discovered the corollary to that, which is people who own a first item are 50% more likely to acquire a second item.