Experiences are less likely to suffer from the problem of unflattering

The apples-and-oranges quality of experiences also makes it easier to enjoy them in the moment, unfettered by depressing comparisons. Researchers at Cornell gave students a Pilot G2 Super Fine pen as a prize and asked them to try it out. When it was surrounded by inferior prizes, including an unsharpened pencil and a bag of rubber bands, the students gave the pen rave reviews. Other students saw the same pen alongside a USB drive and a leatherbound notebook. The presence of more desirable goods significantly diminished the pen’s appeal. This simple study illustrates one of the major barriers to increasing human well-being. We are happy with things, until we find out there are better things available.

Luckily, this tendency may be limited to things. Even the simplest experiences, like eating a bag of crisps, are relatively immune to the detrimental effects of attractive alternatives. Offered the chance to eat a bag of crisps, students enjoyed the crisps’ crunchy goodness regardless of whether the surrounding alternatives included Cadbury’s chocolate or clam juice.

The pen was perfectly good until a leather notebook appeared beside it. Nothing about the pen changed. Comparison altered the experience of owning it.

Objects invite clean rankings: faster processor, finer material, newer model, higher price. Experiences are awkward contestants because their value contains timing, company, mood and memory. A local class may matter because of who attends and the joke that keeps returning. A modest event can become a private reference shared for years, while a technically superior one produces nothing anybody mentions again. The apparently superior alternative is rarely identical enough to issue a decisive humiliation.

Social media has worked heroically to make experiences comparable anyway. Holidays, concerts and dinners now arrive with angles, scores and strategic sunsets. An awful trip remains awful despite being unique, and participation can become as competitive as possession. Yet the resistance matters commercially. A service described only through facilities and specifications becomes easy to rank. The human event—what happens, who takes part, what ritual or shared reference remains—cannot be defeated quite so neatly by a side-by-side table. The same venue can produce a tedious corporate obligation and a treasured birthday. Its square footage explains neither outcome.

Comparison is useful when it reveals a difference that will alter life. It becomes corrosive when its only discovery is that perfection has released a newer version. The pen still writes. The student just saw what else could have been won.