Extending the Self Via Experiences: Undermining Aspects of One's Sense of Self Impacts the Desire for Unique Experiences

Abstract

Defining one's self is an important but challenging task, due to the self's intangible nature. One of the means to overcome this challenge is to extend the self to more tangible manifestations. The present studies examined whether unique experiences can promote such self-extensions, by assessing the relation between people's self-certainty and clearness of self–other boundaries, and their desire for different ways of consuming unique experiences. Study 1 revealed significant negative correlations between participants’ self-certainty and clearness of self–other boundary, and their desire for social (e.g., sharing with others) and permanent aspects (e.g., documentation in pictures) of unique experiences. Studies 2–3 showed that experimentally undermining self-certainty increased participants’ desire for experiences’ social aspect, and undermining self–other boundary increased the desire for the consumption of unique experiences in general. Together, these results demonstrate that by functioning as sources of extension, unique experiences help affirm the self, thus serving as antidotes to damages to one's sense of self.

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