The Psychology of Acquisitiveness

Abstract

Modern humans are obsessed with their possessions. People spend inordinate amounts of time and income—even borrowing against their own uncertain futures—to acquire houses, cars, clothing, and any manner of goods deemed necessary to fill the spaces of their lives. Though many of these goods are surely useful and necessary, our material excesses have grown in recent decades to a point of backlash. Countless books, blogs, and magazine articles are now dedicated to teaching people how to reduce, organize, and practice extreme forms of voluntary simplicity, such as the “zero footprint” lifestyle. (See, for example, Gabbert and Schein 2010; Zero Emission People, nd) Why are we driven to acquire and keep so many goods, most of which we don’t even use or enjoy in any given month or year? This chapter is dedicated to addressing this question by focusing on a heretofore understudied aspect of human behavior–acquisitiveness, defined as the desire to acquire and keep goods per se, above and beyond what appears necessary for one’s own basic comfort, survival, and success. After framing our view of acquisitiveness as an adaptive and normally distributed behavior, we will describe the underlying proximate and ultimate factors that support the behavior. We will then elaborate on the influence of emotions on related economic choices and the neural underpinnings of acquisitiveness before ending with some promising future directions for the field.