This Diderot effect sounds exactly like hedonic adaptation, or the consumer treadmill.
Hedonic adaptation is the way an individual's level of happiness tends to return to his or her normal level after a positive or negative change in circumstances: the person adapts to the "new normal", be it partial paralysis or a big pay raise.
The consumer treadmill is the cycle of working and spending, with additional work required to support additional spending.
The Diderot effect is when you buy items to "go with" another item because of a preconceived notion that they're part of a group of things that are *all* necessary in order to achieve the proper and appropriate effect. In Diderot's case, he received a very nice, fancy dressing-gown as a gift and ended up purchasing a new chair, furnishings, and other consumer goods because acquiring belongings appropriate to a man who would own and use such a dressing-gown became appropriate. I'm sure he became hedonically adapted at some point in the process, and jumped onto the 18th-century equivalent of the consumer treadmill to earn the money to pay for his new indulgences.
I'm like all of these at once?
* I get a new-to-me used sewing machine, then I "need" a sewing machine case.
* I find a couple of nice children's biographies at the thrift store, then I "need" the whole set.
* I get a cargo bike so I drive less, but then I "need" the baby seat and the sun cover and a drink holder and a phone holder and a guy to come help me fix the weird gears.
* My father-in-law gives me his old records, then my dad decides his record player is no good, and before you know it I'm collecting an obscure series of vintage children's records at $25 a pop. What?
You're a completionist. You like to have the whole set of something. When you get an item in a set, take a step back and think if you REALLY want the item/set, or whether you just feel an urge to get the rest of a set because you don't like having an incomplete collection.
I pay my bills online using bill pay.
The American banking system will forever be a mystery to me. WTF is a bill pay?
I have no idea but it does make me laugh that one of the most advanced nations on earth still use cheques :D
bill pay is a website link within your banks site. And we now mostly have the smart chips in our credit and debit cards :-)
Automatic bill pay is when you set up bills to be paid automatically from your credit card or checking account when they are due. So, my electric bill is paid automatically on the due date every month.
We do use checks, but not frequently. I give my landlord checks (he just has four apartments, and two are in his home; it's not a big operation), and occasionally I will give at church with a check (instead of my preferred cash), but that's it. Almost no one uses checks to pay for grocery shopping, and most people pay their bills electronically. Though it may not be common knowledge (
paddedhat :) ), most districts have online payment options for property taxes, water bills, etc. Though the information won't necessarily be printed on your paper bill, you can find it with an internet search.
Though we do have chipped cards, I've heard that they don't work as well as the ones in Europe do, and that sometimes American chipped cards do not work at all in Europe.
Topic: Relatives who just don't get it (Read 3746901 times)