WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Calla Crossley Show. Homer Simpson once said with $10000 we can buy all kinds of useful things like love. Well of Homer Simpson were to start with. He may not need to buy all that other stuff. That's according to a new study out of the University of New Hampshire and Yale. Their research suggests people who feel more secure loved and accepted by others place a lower premium on physical possessions. And it's research that might also help to understand already and why people are compelled to cling to things that no longer serve a functional purpose. And what might this suggest about our consumer culture our land of big box stores where credit card debt is roughly sixty five hundred dollars per person. Could the volume of our shopping carts be inversely proportional to what's in our hearts. This hour we'll examine the dynamics between love and our possessions. Up next all we need is love. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying. Japan's urging

people not to panic over the government's decision to raise the rating of its nuclear crisis to seven the highest level on the international scale. NPR's Richard Harris reports officials believe the Fukushima Daiichi plant has emitted a lot more radiation than they originally thought though since last month's earthquake and tsunami. The new rating does not mean the crisis is getting worse but the new calculations show that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants spewed far more radioactive iodine and cesium into the air than authorities estimated at the time they now say that radiation is about one tenth of what the true noble accident put into the air. But your noble had far worse health consequences than have been seen in Japan at Chernobyl a massive fire deposited that radiation over a wide area and people near that Soviet plant were allowed to drink contaminated milk which led to many cases of thyroid cancer in Japan prevailing winds carried a lot of the radioactive material out to sea. And the government moved quickly to evacuate people from risky areas and to keep contaminated food out of the stores. Richard Harris NPR

News Washington. The U.S. military is investigating a suspected U.S. drone attack believed to have killed two American service members in Afghanistan. The troops who are reportedly conducting anti-Taliban operations in Helmand province at the time of the suspected attack humanitarian groups are warning of a security vacuum in Ivory Coast where the fight for the presidency ended yesterday with former leader Laurent Gbagbo surrendering to forces backing President elect Alassane Ouattara the World Food Program is suspending flights to Abidjan because of risks to staff the city is expected to remain dangerous in the coming weeks. With youth gang still in possession of weapons they receive from those allies. Reporting from NPR's Ofeibea Quist Arkin says the UN guarded Gulf Hotel Watada as headquarters now resembles a giant refugee camp you know home bucko and his wife want to go to the Gulf Hotel off of the lead at the presidential residence. Now on to a U.N. a Bible couple was hurriedly dressed in

good clothing. The outgoing president liberated the grill chicken who instead of others transported from the presidential bunker walk Bessel across the lobby in single file. Some women that used a lower level conference room had become a makeshift tree of this place. Babies and women in the creek lined court side. Just like you and since I was a peace people while the laundry of a boy. Trying to dry off a little. US stocks down across the board Dow down nearly 1 percent to twelve thousand 259 Nasdaq off 27. This is NPR. In the first known application of new anti sex abuse rules approved last year the Vatican has sanctioned a Belgian bishop. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports that now the bishop can no longer act as a priest in public.

The Vatican's announcement Tuesday was a clarification after Belgian bishops who reported that Bruce Bishop Roger Vanga Lewis had merely been sent out of Belgium for spiritual and psychological counseling. The bishop resigned last year when he admitted sexually abusing his nephew between 1973 in 1986 unleashing a deep crisis in the Belgian Catholic Church in accordance with new sex abuse norms approved last year the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has jurisdiction to investigate and sanction bishops and cardinals who abuse minors with possible defrocking as the ultimate penalty. Today's announcement indicated that the bishop could risk further sanctions after receiving psychological treatment. Sylvia Poggioli NPR News Rome. Jury deliberations are underway in the case of a white man charged with burning a predominantly black church in Massachusetts within hours of President Obama's election in 2008. Michael Jakes faces several charges including conspiracy against civil rights and damage to religious property. He was implicated by two friends

who had pleaded guilty to the charges. Jakes maintains he never set fire to the church. He could get up to 60 years in prison if convicted. At last check on Wall Street the Dow Jones Industrial Average down now one percent or one hundred twenty four points to twelve thousand two hundred fifty seven. Nasdaq falling one percent to twenty seven forty six S&P 500 down nearly one. 13:13 This is NPR. Support for NPR comes from a Marc foundation supporting pro toward a website for teachers and the public to explore the pros and cons of controversial issues. Good afternoon I'm Cally Crossley This is the Kelly Crossley Show. A study out of Yale University finds that people put a higher premium on possessions when they feel less loved and less secure. This research can help to decode the pathology behind hoarding. It may also give us something to think long and hard about at the checkout

line. It's a behavioral tic that marketers have been exploiting for years and now psychologists are examining it. Joining me to talk about what this study says about us and society at large is Margaret Clarke a professor of psychology at Yale University. She coauthored the study on love and possessions published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and Lamaze Also with us he's an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. He also worked on the report. Greg McCracken is a research affiliated at MIT who studies the intersection of culture and commerce. And Gail started Stuckey setted is dean of Boston University's School of Social Work. She is the author of Stuff Compulsive hoarders and the meaning of things. Welcome to you all. Thank you. Thank you listeners you can get in on the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Do you see a correlation between your consumer behavior and how loved and secure you feel. 8 7

7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 You can also send us a tweet or write a comment to our Facebook page. I'd like to start with you Margaret Clark. What does your study tell us about why we love our stuff. Well the theory is pretty simple. What we think is that humans are need to feel secure and that we can derive security from physical possessions our houses our clothing our food for instance. And we also derive security from other people who care about our welfare and will act to protect our well-being. So in France for instance when survive if someone wasn't watching out for their welfare. What we're saying is really quite simple and that's that. These sources of security trade off to some extent and in particular in our work we looked at if you enhance a person's sense that other people will protect them will watch out for their welfare. Will that decrease their need

for possessions and show up as in the form of them placing less monetary value on their goods. That was my guess Margaret Clark professor of psychology at Yale University and you worked on this study as well. I wonder if you tell us how you put this study together to come to the conclusions that Margaret just explained. Well we used experimental manipulations in both studies in study one. We randomly assigned participants to think of a time in which they felt supported by a close relationship partner or in a control condition you might say we asked participants to think of a time in which they had a pleasant restaurant experience with somebody else. Then we asked them to ask to tell us how much money they would require to sell the blanket on their bed and what we found is that participants who were

randomly assigned to be in the security condition those who were describing a time in which they received support from somebody else required less money to sell the blanket on their bed relative to participants who were assigned to the other condition the control condition. All right Greg McCracken you study the intersection of culture and commerce. How is it that the folks who are about the business of selling have benefited from our need to possess. Well I'm not sure I don't the for the findings of this research. I do doubt the implications and in fact more specifically I doubt that we can draw from the study implications about marketing and as you say the the way in which people engage in the process of marketing. What is your back what do you think it means then what do you think the study results mean then. How would you interpret them. Well again I as an anthropologist I'm not sure I'm qualified to judge psychological studies but if the

implication is that people who own many things and care about owning things and think about buying things must somehow suffer a deficit in matters of their social connections their their domestic affairs. And and I think that's probably wrong. That is to say we are there. There are good well established the anthropological grounds for understanding our attachment to objects that don't require us to to posit anything about our or social relationships and indeed don't can't serve as a foundation for supposing that there is the relationship that is being supplied here by implication. All right so Grant McCracken says not quite sure he's going along with the result of the study it means something different from an anthropological perspective as he's looking at it. Gail you're the dean of the bus University School of Social Work and the author of Stuff Compulsive hoarders and the meaning of things and what we all worry

about is if we get to the point where we are liking our stuff too much we're going to turn into a hoarder. And so I guess if you're going to believe the results of the study then then are hoarders just people who just never had any love. Well there are some things about hoarding that are reached our research and research from other colleagues of ours shows. And that is that people who hoard do tend to be a bit more isolated than ordinary people in the population. They're less often likely to marry. They're more likely to live alone. Now the problem we have is that we tend to see these people when they are 50 and older because that's when they come in to seek some help for the problem or are willing to be part of our research. So one thing we know is that this issue doesn't really take root in a problematic way until they hit this middle age group. And so one of the challenges we have is to try to figure out what is age got to do with this problem and what is just part and parcel

of the process of accumulating objects for frankly a wide variety of reasons. And this experimental study is certainly an interesting one and I tend to agree with Grant that we can't completely extrapolate from it about our personal situations. But it's interesting and it certainly accords with some of the notions of this isolation and the possibility that we haven't actually studied yet which is whether or not people who hoard whether that begins as a result of some kind of problem with attachment to other people when they're younger. That's my guest Gail cycad a she is a dean of Boston University School of Social Work and the author of compulsive hoarders and the meaning of things. We have a vigorous conversation going here about possessions love security. And we want you to be part of it 8 7 7 3 0 1 0 8 0 9 7 8 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. You can also send us a tweet or write to our Facebook page. OK so Margaret back to you. Margaret Clark professor of psychology at Yale

University. Grant McCracken and Gail Steketee both say well maybe it can't be individualized. Your study results what say you. Well first let me comment on what Grant said which is that there are other reasons why people have goods. I don't think any of us who did it in actually it's more than one study we found this in two different studies. I don't think those of us who did these studies would disagree with that. We need physical possessions for daily life and that to some extent has nothing whatsoever to do with interpersonal security. You know I want my my house and my clothing and my food simply to survive. So I wouldn't say that we want to say this is the only source of valuing possessions and that's important with regard to how it applies to people's ongoing lives. That that's something you know we're empirical scientists that's something that you know we have to

test. We don't know exactly how it will apply. We observed a twice we're not the only people who have observed this connection between insecurity and valuing possessions. There are quite a number of studies actually that have shown that reducing a sense of security makes people more materialistic we're not alone and in this finding this connection I do believe we're the only people who have shown that increasing a person's sense of security decreases the monetary value they put on specific possessions. All right we have a caller Nancy from Falmouth. Go ahead please you're on the callee Crossley Show eighty nine point seven. Yes. Thank you for the interesting discussion and for taking my call. I am 81 years old and I actually lived and a depression of the 30s and my husband and I were both raised in an environment where people fixed everything and

repaired everything. And that mantra was use it up wear it out make it do or do without. And we're always able to see this. Might be something that if we really got in dire straits we might be able to make some use. And this has led to a hoarding of possibly you know slow objects and we're overwhelmed with them. Gail Steketee How would you respond to Nancy. Well the problem I think you've got Nancy is in the possibly part of what you just yet. And if so your thinking about the future but probably not so much about the present and what it is that you're trying to accomplish at this you know this week of your life for this month of your life. And so you don't think too much in that. Yeah exactly. So you might want to think a little bit about that process there are many many reasons why people save things in the one you're describing is

about not wanting to waste things and what accompanies that is a lot of guilt. And I wonder whether that guilt isn't misplaced. And I do want a short thank you very much Nancy for the call. One of the things that came up in some of the reading I was doing in preparation for this is that hoarding Gayle's to getit is really indecision and perfectionism to some degree which I was actually kind of surprised by the perfectionism that well in me the perfectionism shows up in a wide variety of ways it certainly doesn't show up in the cluttered home. Let's face it. But it does show up in ways like just a tiny example is someone who was unable to get rid of an old beat up luggage piece of luggage because they knew they had the key and they couldn't find the key and they wanted the thing to be together. It felt whole if it had its key but not if it didn't and they couldn't part with it. It's a funny little piece of perfectionism and there are many other versions of it. I have to have all of the possible versions

of this thing or it isn't a complete collection and therefore it's not adequate somehow. Well it's much more to talk about here because I'm just fascinated by this entire subject matter I have to say it from the end of the hoarding on one end of the spectrum to the other in where we have love in possessions. So we're talking about what our need to buy things to cling to material possessions says about us. A new study out of Yale finds that we put a higher premium on things when we feel less loved and less secure. Listeners What say you where at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Do you agree. Do you see your own insecurities playing out at the department store or late at night on the QVC channel. Or do you say poppy cock. This is simply the reality of being in a capitalist society. 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. We'll be back after this break stay tuned to eighty nine point seven.

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Good afternoon I'm Cally Crossley This is the Calla Crossley Show. If you're just tuning in we're talking about a new study out of Yale University that found that we place greater value on our possessions if we feel less secure and less loved. Joining me to talk through all the implications of this research are Margaret Clark a professor of psychology at Yale University. She coauthored the study. I'm also joined by Ed Lemay an assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire. He also worked on the study. Greg McCracken is a research affiliate at MIT who studies the intersection of culture and commerce. And Gail static He is dean of Boston University's School of Social Work. Listeners you can get in on the conversation at 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 9 seventy 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Does this research jibe with your relationship to your possessions. Are you less likely to shop and to cling to things in your more secure moments or do you think this is over analyzing what so many of us do every day buy stuff. 8 7 7

3 0 1 8 0 9 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Great Macaire crackin before I get to these callers I just want to ask you through your lens of culture and commerce. What is our relationship with stuff. I mean Americans who seem to have plenty of stuff to get and want more. Yes I think it to give a thoroughgoing account of why we care about stuff we need to. We need I think if I may just take exception to what Margaret said when she was sort of conceding that there are motives for wanting things beyond insecurity and she said well you know usefulness of course is the factor we need to have things in. You know I would remind her of what Shakespeare has leaders say when they strip him of all of the markers of his of his standing. He says the reason and they say listen you don't need this stuff. Surely you can give it up. And he says the reason not the need Elst man's life is cheap as

beasts. His complaint is that surely this is one of the things that distinguishes us from from animals from other animals is that our relationship with objects is it goes well beyond the need. And indeed we engage with these objects because we extract from them cultural meanings and social definitions and we construct some part of our life and our self out of the objects supplied under the meaning supplied by by objects. And one of the people to whom we could refer it here for you know not just the anthropological account but but an art history one the joules pound. Professor of art history at Yale until recently and is now retired. You know kids these make this simply nuanced accounts of what a teapot meant in the 18th century. And I think you know an Arkia will archaeologists are constantly digging things out of the ground and showing how these objects took on and gave off the cultural meaning of the

moment. Some of the scholarship comes to a screeching halt when we talk about ourselves and we talk about our own possessions. Suddenly that's materialism and self-indulgence and it's insecurity. But in point of fact I think the relationship between the object the meaning and and the consumer the owner is is always more. KID OK well so for you when does it get to be materialism when we just buy a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes because we want it and I'm just hanging out in a T.J. Maxx because I like it. I mean and it has nothing to do with my appreciation of the objects I may be pursuing. Sure at the margin I think we can talk about hoarding and we can talk about things that are super for fluid and you know from point an additional pair of shoes. It doesn't have utility in it and it doesn't have it doesn't add cultural meaning. But but it's only there at the extreme that I think these accounts are a really useful you know. You know I do the anthropology of the American household. I studied something called homeliness. And there you see people

building up these complements of objects for very good and quite sensible reasons and by sensible I don't mean that that they need them in any literal sense but that they use these objects to craft notions of the self in the family and OK say I'm from Lincoln Massachusetts you're on the Cali Crosley show. Go ahead please. Thanks for taking my call a great program. I am a social worker and I've always been fascinated by the way the habits of the very wealthy. And I'm wondering how you distinguish between hoarding and in. And are the habits of the very wealthy just a species of hoarding it seems like very odd behavior no people own like 5 cars and 3 homes and it seems like they always have to have more and more and more and more and I'm just sorting is this peculiar to our culture. Because I know a lot of cultures for instance use Siri is really frowned upon but in our culture being a rich investment banker that you know charges incredible interest in the Rob society is considered in some circles I think

really admire will but my will behavior. Yeah greed is good so they say oh yeah is it just peculiar to our culture is that peculiar to capitalism. OK well let me get a couple of my guest to weigh in on this so Cam to start with you Gayle started and you were the hoarding expert here so let's respond to that part and then Margaret I'm going to come to you. Well I'll just free associate here for a minute. The wealthy issue you know unfortunately hoarding is not a respect or of you know what kind of educational background or how much money you have or much else for that matter it certainly crosses the board. I don't know that people's attachment to stuff differs so much by whether how much money they have although certainly there is some tendency that we've seen for people who hoard to have less money. I will say that at the same time we are not a class thing so it is not a class thing. And we have certainly seen wealthy hoarders. But the source of the wealth you know this is

highly variable people have collections that are you know X dreamily valuable for a variety of reasons much of that has a lot to do with identity. Whether or not it's got much to do with security is an interesting question and I think I don't know the answer to that. OK well Ed and Margaret are psychologists and they've been looking at this. And my question of following our callers is if you are wealthy and own all this stuff are you really insecure. So is Oprah and Richard Branson are they pretty insecure. Margaret Gee I don't know. I was actually thinking in a different direction so if you let me comment on identity and culture first maybe and maybe and I'll tell me. Yeah maybe you can answer that one. Come on and your psychologists are Oprah and Richard Branson they're wealthy and they got a lot of stuff. Are they really insecure.

Hard for me to tell. We look at group differences differences and averages across experimental conditions. That's not the same thing as saying that every individual will be X Y or Z. So it's quite possible that you can find somebody who seems materialistic but is quite secure. But in terms of group averages it seems to be the case that more materialistic individuals are less secure interpersonally. So I'm going interpret that that all the stuff in my house means I'm terribly secure I like my stuff. And I'm. I'm worried about it. I'm going to go to Mike from Rhode Island. You're on the air Kelly Crossley So go ahead please. Hi I have several points to make those quickly as they can. I think that there might be a little too much overthinking going on here. My occupation is to liquidate estates of people and some of them

have fairly extensive collections of various things. But with without the benefit of a psychology degree my observation is that America went a hundred years ago from a country that bought things that they needed to survive. Fifty years ago they started buying things that they wanted. And now we we shop for entertainment. We buy because it's trendy and it has nothing to do with anything but the joy of shopping. People plan big cations and holidays around going shopping without any regard for buying anything of any value. The other side by side from the is the psychological issue of being a hoarder which is quite different I think than somebody that just has a lot of stuff. And I think that's correct. I see I see a lot of households that were over my career as an auctioneer in an estate liquidator. People that survived the Depression and consequently everything that they had at that time and accumulated after they saved because they remembered what it was like to have nothing. And

I think that was a real part of that generation the generation. However you know that we're looking at it now. People have things that were of no value the day that they bought the new. They have no resale value. They're not meant to last a lifetime. You know I used to see people that had houses full of furniture that was built in the Victorian era or a hundred years ago by real craftsman. Now we have furniture that's designed to be destroyed and thrown away and after seven to 10 years. Yeah you know it's just it's it's it's a it's a different mentality than what was going on through the in the minds of the people that lived through the Depression and what and when the rest of their life believing that it could happen to me again. And for some people look today it did happen. Again Mike I have a question for you. Are you a person with a lot of stuff. No I am an absolute minimalist. I couldn't care less about stuff unless I can sell it. OK well that gets right down to the most you're pretty secure then. According the

study I think I think so. All right thank you so much for the call. I think this study may have over thought this issue a little bit we've just we've been sold to death as Americans go buy more be trendy buy from this one buy from that one. All right well I think Grant agrees with you thank you so much for the call. I like Grant Victoria Marblehead Massachusetts go ahead please. Yes I wanted to just make a comment on preorders I guess you might think people that buy things to sort of raise their standing in the community or with their friends such as antique jewelry expensive clothes and that sort of thing. And then that may actually lead into hoarding but purchasing to really sort of embellish your standing within the community things that you don't need but you feel you need that would seem to

me Margaret to strike right at the heart of the piece of your study about the security. If you're making that link Victoria says they're buying stuff they don't need but they're just trying to be feel better about themselves and feel more worthwhile is that what you mean. And by the way we should distinguish that use you use the word love in the in the piece as well as security. So would you agree with what Victoria say. Yes I think and I don't actually think it's a separate point than the one we want to make or a separate point than the one that was made earlier in the show about people may buy things because for cultural reasons to fit into a culture to establish an identity because fitting into a culture establishing identity buying antiques to impress people around you. All those comments I think are closely related to the point we want to make that people may possessing things may enhance your interpersonal security their just close ties.

And what you're doing when you're buying things to fit in is your. You're trying to enhance interpersonal security. There are all kinds you know that tie goes in a lot of directions. Grant our last caller our caller before last agreed with you said maybe we're overthinking this all over thinking all of this. What say you. I'm not sure it's possible to overthink this. In fact I think there's an American tradition of under stinking materialism. But we've done an appallingly bad job of coming to terms with the material culture that is crucial to the American experiment. And so I wish we. We think it and overthink it much more. All right. What would you go next in studying this. Margaret Clark and Limaye you've you said there's other studies that I agree with what you found here in this particular study and I wonder where you would take it next so that we would have more specificity about what we mean about security and

love. In this study because you use both words so is it possible to be quite secure and not loved and have a different response to things in your life then I maybe then if you're loved and not secure. Or should we take both of those terms to be the same in the case of the study. Yeah I was going to say that they're I think they're closely related in terms of where to go next. Let me first comment on a place people have already been. We did experimental work where we randomly assigned people anybody trying to show that anybody if you enhance their security places less value on goods other people have shown links between personality chronically insecure people placing being more materialistic that link has been established. We

haven't quite figured out exactly where we're going in the future but you certainly could could see if it reverses and see if in fact having Possessed Possessions that people believe are worth more makes them more interpersonally secure. My guess is it won't go in that direction but it's an empirical question. Well that's one that just keeps coming up for me because I think can't be perfectly content perfectly secure just like your stuff. You have a lot but maybe you're not. You're pretty hoarding as one of the callers said but you just like your stuff can't be that all at once. Gail you probably certainly can I mean you know we are a culture and I think the our estate liquidator caller made a good point. A hundred years ago life was very different and materialism was a very different concept if indeed it was a concept at that time. But we can have stuff and enjoy it. The the fundamental issue

when you get into something like hoarding which is the pathology end of the ownership issue and there's nothing wrong with ownership until it causes impairment and distress and then we have a problem. But apart from that if we have place to put it and we like looking at it and then we go around it we use it and it doesn't prevent us from having a solid personal relationships then. Where is the problem. All right. Well that's a good pause for us when we can continue to talk about this on the other side of this break. ADLER may assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire I know you have to leave us right now thank you so much for your part in a conversation. Thank you for having me. We're talking about our need to buy things to cling to material possessions and what it all says about us. A new study out of Yale finds that we put a higher premium on things when we feel less loved and less secure. Listeners What's your take on this. Where do you place yourself on the spectrum of how secure you feel and your relationship to material goods.

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weekdays at noon on eighty nine point seven at 7pm on GBH 2. That afternoon I'm Kalee Crossley This is the Calla Crossley Show. We're talking about a new study out of Yale University that finds that we put a higher premium on things when we feel less loved and less secure. I'm joined by Margaret Clarke a professor of psychology at Yale University. She coauthored the study on love and possessions published in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Grant McCracken is a research affiliate at MIT who studies the intersection of culture and commerce. And Gail static He is dean of Boston University's School of Social Work and she's also the author of Stuff Compulsive hoarders and the meaning of things. Listeners were 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70. Does this research resonate with you. Where do you see yourself in this equation. Can you not part with that backscratcher that you bought of the dollar store 10 years ago.

Even though you never use it. 8 7 7 3 0 1 8 0 9 7 8 7 7 3 0 1 89 70 and don't forget you can send us a tweet or write to our Facebook page and take a call right off the top here Pat from Smithfield Rhode Island. Go ahead please you're on the Kelly Crossley Show. Hi. I guess the only fall under the category of packrat and I have a twofold question I want to know where do you draw the line between packrat and order. And has there been any. Research done into using hypnosis to deal with this issue. I thank you very much Brad I'll throw that right to you Gail study who is the dean of us University School of Social Work. Go ahead. The line between packrat. Some people call it collector and hoarder if we can use that sometimes derogatory term it depends on who is using it and how they feel about it. The line is really about what I said earlier which is about impairment in distress

when the amount of stuff in a room prevents you from using that room the way you would like to use it. Then you've got impairment and it's a problem and it's likely to be a problem in one's social sphere presuming the person is comfortable socially and would like to have others around. If you're spending so much money buying things which is part of what we've been talking about today but and you're buying is out of line with your income and how you would like to spend that money then you've got another problem there. So that's really the line is that level of impairment and the extent to which it disturbs either you or the people around you who have your best interests at heart. So distress isn't always in the eye of the collector shall we say. Sometimes it's in the eye of those around them. OK thank you very much Pat for the call Grant. I want to go back to you for a second because you said we don't talk about these issues enough but it seems to me and maybe is just and I know it's anecdotal in the last few years certainly we're

had more attention paid to hoarding as a phenomenon. And before that then we start thinking about materialism in general and what it says about we Americans is that part of our culture in general. So what do you mean by we don't talk about this enough and and how can we check ourselves I guess if we're out and about in making purchases. Let me read some ethnographic data into the record if I could. Picture this you're standing in the doorway between the House and the garage and the garage is filled to bursting with object. In fact the so many objects in the garage cars no longer are allowed to park there. So this is me doing my research on how American craft home. And when the respondent is telling me about showing me her garage explaining that car's no longer parked there and I say to her Well my untutored I do looks at this and sees only chaos and I stable. Show me what what you have here and she

systematically goes through and and talks about how she's able to stage in any family holiday almost you know instantaneously so that when Christmas rolls around or when Thanksgiving rolls around she has the various ritual accessories she needs to have it and are there in the garage. Actually it is my eye begins to see what she can see. The stuff is actually color coded so she knows exactly where to go to gather the things she needs to stage this family event called things get. This seems to me you know classical he will what Americans are what the reason Americans are preoccupied with objects and the reason they have them in the course. It looks to us as we drive by the garage like all hell is broken. This is the hell in a hand-basket actually. But in. Point of fact you sit there and talk to the owner of this stuff and sometimes certainly this is pathology but in other cases it's just the reflection of how Americans live and in this case the ability of a

householder to stage a family ritual in the press of all the other things she has to do in the course of a day week in a year. Before I take a call Grant Where do you place the phenomenon of the ever increasing use of story centers. We have so much stuff we put our stuff in storage centers. All right I confess I have stuff in a story Center. Where do you place those places that. Yeah well there's a ferocious operational or logistical problem for all of us. When you think about all the things we own all of those objects are aging in place. And you know but the French geographer brought Bill particularly good about talking about how sensitive to that trend and found in fashion our culture isn't because all of the objects in our world springing from the manufacture manufacture who is seen more hersel sensitive to that in fashion they're all marked by their attachment to the stylistic moment and that

means that a lot of the stuff is useful in some utilitarian sense but not useful but is now out of date from some cultural. Symbolic invalid point you and I think you know so we. So the woman is standing looking at her garage is faced with this fantastic operation operational problem. Some of the objects she's looking at are out of date it's very hard for her to know which of them are out of date and still harder for her to extract. And I think that's where you maybe get these moments where people just go into a kind of stall and they start managing these objects because that the operational complexity overwhelms them and it's just easier to close the door in the garage and it is to continue to manage the problem it represents. All right that's Grant McCracken a research affiliate at MIT. Kathy from Swansea Massachusetts you're in the Cali cross. Joe go ahead please. Good afternoon. My issue began in 2006 when I lost a professional position six take in salary the whole nine yards scans

approximately two years in the caring yet another profession which I did and that is. When the collecting boarding begins and I begin to buy things like lots of paper towels lots of staple items in the case of a natural disaster I could probably live two years on what I had for it. And I seem to have a difficulty in stopping doing so and you know I'm listening to this and I'm realizing that the dissonance in my purchasing and what I really need is probably informed by the fact that I did it with out essentially for those two years and they can't quite psychologically remove myself from the feeling that I may have another time when I may be downsized and I think that's the reason why I have a nine room and should be in ritual rooms which are essentially storage. I can move in them but they're not used for the purpose for which they were intended. All right. Just give a pause here let me get my guest to respond to you first Margaret

is Margaret Clark professor of psychology at Yale University is Is our caller in secure. Well I think she's saying Oh well first of all I want to be very careful to tell you I am not a clinical psychologist and I don't diagnose people as being secure or secure. I'm interested primarily in processes that apply to everyone. That said I think she answered that question herself. She said you know I lost a job I was out of a job for a couple years that I think that reminds you that you can be vulnerable. Is that an easy explanation for why people might want to store up things. I think it is. I don't see any great mystery there. All right Gail study author of Stuff Compulsive hoarders and the Meaning of Things is our our cholera preorder. Well possibly and I suppose Cathy you want to kind of

pay attention to whether or not that stuff spreads from the two rooms you're using for storage into the spaces you're living in. I do hear anxiety and fear behind the collecting on the other hand this happened to you. You know it's not a made up problem it's not a possibility as we heard from an earlier person who was calling in. So you've been there done that and probably have a pretty good sense of what it would take if you lost another job and you needed to get through that period. Man if it starts to expand from there then you definitely need some help in reining that one in because the anxiety that has taken over what is otherwise a realistic concern in her own right. Thank you very much for the call. Thank you Donna from Fall River. You're on the air. Kelly Crossley Show Go ahead please. Thank you for having me. Yeah I wanted to add that I don't think that

collecting all saying I have a whole collection of family heirlooms from the seventeen hundred eighteen hundred My family came here in 15 30. And I've been saving them for my grandchildren because I feel that there should be some things in your life that are not disposable. And it's thanks mate from great great great grandfathers. I have letters from the eighteen hundred from different historical benches that were in my family and I feel that the grandchildren should be able to say these things and have to be the children and I don't consider reporting I don't have a lot to spend on it because I was an only child of an only child of an only child and I inherited everything from my ancestors. All right thank you know thank you very much for the call Gail study and then Grant I'm going to let you weigh in on it. What do you think you.

Well I would say that those are probably valuable items I bet Antiques Roadshow would love to talk about I was going to say. Actually and only child only child the only child I'm just hoping that you have more than one grandchild to pass these down to and absolutely these are important and valuable and a piece of one security. These represent your own family history. Nobody you know has a right to tell you you shouldn't hang on to those. But how you handle them in your own life and how you pass them down obviously probably makes a difference. And Grant McCracken this is I think what you meant about you know people's connection with their objects and the understanding of them in their lives. Yes that's exactly right. I mean it seems to me useful maybe but to think about consumers less as people just started with material indulgence isn't and perhaps makes more sense to think about them as as curators curating collections that have meaning and and this. It's especially vivid in the case in this case but I think it's true for people

dealing with objects even objects that are not don't have an heirloom kind of status. Even objects that in fact they're not going to pass down to anybody. Those objects have the kind of significance that museum objects can have for the curator they think. They tell stories that help construct a story. So we have that very much to me. I'm curious and I don't know actually which one of you to direct this to Gail sticky You mentioned earlier that people seem to become hoarders later in life because maybe the NAV the stuff to hoard earlier but later in life they start showing signs of this. There's a lot of discussion now about de-cluttering and it seems to me the numbers of people that I know now earth are are saying they they weren't hoarders they just had stuff so maybe like our last caller saving it for this where that one. You know what I'm tired of the stuff I'm going to give it away or I'm just going to throw it away. But I just want to pare down. I don't know what that phenomenon is cause or is that somehow a response to something in society in general or

what's going on here I'll start with you Margaret Clark and have you looked at that part at all. No we haven't I study relationships generally. But you know it might be as simple a response as something we talked about earlier in the show which is if things start to get in your way you don't have space you want the space for some other reason it may be very adaptive to say it's time to get rid of some stuff. I think oftentimes people do that I found myself doing it you know when your own children are grown they can use it. You know it's kind of like they can use it that's great it's time to get rid of it. Right. They'll study if you sing that. I know it from personal experience as well and I certainly agree with Margaret that at some point you want to pass along the things that no longer have that much meaning to you. They may be family pieces that's fine you want to pass those on but sometimes they're just utilitarian items and you're not using them and haven't used them in

too long and then there's a sense of objects as we age have less value to many of us compared to our personal relationships frankly and we don't want to spend time on those objects in the same way that we want to spend time with our family and our friends. So I do wonder if some of this research doesn't you know wouldn't ultimately lead us to that as we age. It belies the problem of hoarding among older adults which you know is obviously only a very small portion of the population the rest of us still have stuff and have to deal with it. Right exactly. But in the car you're in the Cali Crossley Show Go ahead please. Well I have a comment and a question I guess and I don't know which one to go with first so maybe I'll go with a comment first on the question later on if we have time. The comment has to do with the class aspect of this that you know if you've got a nine room house you don't look like you're as much of a hoarder as if you have a four room house and so you know

how much of this you know the pathological aspect of this reflects you know people's fluence And what what material possessions they have that allow them to have a need or a space even though they got off a lot of stuff they don't use. And on the record and on the bigger side of that you know how much is you know reflected by the fact that capitalism is intrinsically acquisitive and that our buying habits are influenced by our culture because of this you know. Will Islam doesn't survive without people buying more stuff than they need and the whole idea you know what did Bush say when 9/11 you know what can you do to make things better go shopping. So you know how much of this is reflected by that and the question is a scientific one. Is there any genetic basis the nature and nurture thing among individuals. You know the PAF ology of having every newspaper in the last 10 years in your living room is that writing to people from

generation to generation. Or is there no connection. Thanks Bob we've got just a few minutes left I'm going to try to get our my guests here to answer your question. Want to start off taking the genetic piece. Hoarding does run in families. My geneticist colleagues are pretty convinced that they are going to track some genetic linkages here. No doubt there's a bit of nurture tossed in but we are suspecting that the genetic piece may be stronger and the question for us is what is the genetics about it. It's probably something to do with decision making and executive functioning. Ok Grant last word. How would you respond. I think you know we had lots of talk about the new normal that was coming on the heels of the the present the downturn that's just ending and and and and I think. In fact we'll see people go right back to their old consumption patterns then and then in fact no new normal is upon us. This is I think pretty well demonstrated after 9/11 when every virtually everybody who lived in

Manhattan and lived through that horror said I now know what matters. It's not material things it's friends and family and within six or nine months they were back to their old materialism and I would argue that that's because they are a cult. There's a cultural significance to that materialism that sometimes. All right. Margaret Clark I guess the last thing I'd say is I wouldn't separate out the desire for interpersonal security from the cultural part. We go along with our culture in order to be part of it in order to fit in with other people. I don't think those are separate factors. All right thank you so much to all my guests. We've been talking about the relationship between love and possessions with Margaret Clark a professor of psychology at Yale University. Brett McCracken is a research affiliate at MIT. Check out his superb blog culture by dot com. And Gail started he is dean of Boston University's School of Social Work. She's the author of Stuff Compulsive hoarders and the meaning of things you can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show at

WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley where production of WGBH radio in Boston NPR station for news and culture.