The Underlying Psychology of Ego and Audio

[Ron Resnick]

Would our members who are psychologists or psychiatrists please kindly explain in academic terms the human psychology which connects ego with purchase decisions/owning things?

Why, after somebody purchases an audio product:

-- does he/she sometimes become a partisan advocate for that product?

--does he/she sometimes become offended if other people prefer a competing product?

Why do some people seem to experience these feelings, while other people do not?

Why do some audiophiles allow their identities to get wrapped up in their component purchases.

How do psychological theories of cognitive dissonance factor into these questions and behaviors?

If there are different theories or schools of thought about the connection between ego and owning things please describe neutrally the competing theories. Of course feel free to let us know which theory you consider to have the greatest explanatory power for the behavior being analyzed.

 

[caesar]

Would our members who are psychologists or psychiatrists please kindly explain in academic terms the human psychology which connects ego with purchase decisions/owning things?

Why, after somebody purchases an audio product:

-- does he/she sometimes become a partisan advocate for that product?

Check out Kahneman's work on the Endowment effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
(Kahneman, a psychologist, won the Nobel prize in economics, and his theories explain a lot of the garbage going down in this hobby.)

I highly recommend his book , Thinking Fast and Slow, as a great intro to the field

Dick Thaler, also a Nobel laureate, was also involved in this research

 

[andromedaaudio]

Ceasar you re not a psychiatrist but neither am i lol.

I think this childish purchase protection thing / getting offended by different opinions is mainly a audiophile industry thing .
I dont think u see it to such a degree in other hobbies .
Its simply the character of a lot of audiophiles.
If a bmw driver would tell a guy who just purchased a mercedes he is dumb and knows nothing about cars that industry would turn into the same thing

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I think it's simply the character of many people, independent of specific hobby interests. People will fight to the death for the best BBQ, sport team, language, political party, or car. Ever see the sticker of the kid pissing on the Chevy logo, or Ford logo? Or MOPAR logo?

And BTW my yoga teacher can kick your yoga teacher's ass.

I think it's a kind of tribalism, blended with ego, sprinkle of insecurity, perhaps.

Caveat: I am an observer of people; I am not a psychologist. And my hifi is the best...

 

[thedudeabides]

Not a shrink but here is a common sense perspective. Immature, insecure and narcissistic.

 

[dan31]

This is quite common in life. In any area of interest we have, we become invested in past, present and future outcomes. These outcomes are tied to our ego, the degree to which the outcome stimulates our ego/self is variable based on our personalities and our current state of mind. Nothing new here, keep moving.

 

[caesar]

Ceasar you re not a psychiatrist but neither am i lol.

I think this childish purchase protection thing / getting offended by different opinions is mainly a audiophile industry thing .
I dont think u see it to such a degree in other hobbies .
Its simply the character of a lot of audiophiles.
If a bmw driver would tell a guy who just purchased a mercedes he is dumb and knows nothing about cars that industry would turn into the same thing

Hi Andromeda,

Most psychiatrists today I am aware of are are not interested in the way the mind works but are just drug pushers .... that's what they learn in their residencies...

And I am not claiming to be a psychologist. Never wanted to be one. Half , or more of the psychologists I know are fukkin whacked themselves !! and that’s why they probably became psychologists , to find out why they are so whacked themselves! Hahahaha . Or at least my mother in law is, and she’s polluting my sample. ….. hahaha Shoot, I hope she is not reading this

But kidding aside, obviously a lot of factors at play here. I interpreted Ron’s question as an ask for serious and science - based underlying patterns which drive the illiberal stuff and arrogance that makes the audiophile culture so ugly very frequently.

although I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, I have a deep background in behavioral sciences. This means I can think about people like a psychological scientist , rather than an Intuitive scientist/ “armchair psychologist”.) Most people trust their intuition, but their intuition is frequently wrong.. So I was trained to identify illusion vs reality, separate common sense from common nonsense, and most importantly - enable accurate evaluation, insight, and action. (Check out books by Kahneman and Thaler, both Nobel laureates in the behavioral sciences. Thaler was my prof for decision making.)

And I agree with you on the point in the context of audio , so let me generalize a bit …

many experts in this hobby - in print magazines and on the internet- do not recognize audio fans as human beings.

instead of treating audio fans like humans with a fully human mind with thoughts, beliefs, emotions and desire to enjoy high end experiences they enjoy,

Audio journalists and other “experts” on forums dehumanize the audio fans and preach to us every month that whatever toys they like this month , such as Wilson with ch circumcision is the BESt. Those of us who are not them, we have lesser minds and are lesser persons

and of, course we see this “inhumanity” on audio sites where members overlook the minds Of forum members and are indifferent to the humanity of other forum members - instead of engaging with the mind of another person… they are just interested in creating a band wagon effect for their favorite toys...

late me quote Shylock from Shakespeare’s “the Merchant of Venice” , for all the rude mother fuyer “experts” on this site and others , calling other people they disagree with names : “ . “…

in the extreme, whether the nazis propagandizing Jewish stereotypes before committing murder or the Hutus depicting the Tutus as mindless cockroaches before killing them by the thousands, it all stems from a failure to recognize others as fully human when someone is different or distant from us.

The solution , however, is to engage and understand the minds of others, but instead guys are more concerned with getting “likes” to boost their clueless, fragile egos from a very small handful of others like them which results in this disgusting culture

 

[Argonaut]

 

[microstrip]

"Pride of Ownership" is a common subject for articles, Master or even PhD thesis. Just the first one I got from google :

Pride of Ownership: An Identity-Based Model​

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/697076?journalCode=jacr

Marketing people take it very seriously.

 

[Stefan]

Wow Ron, what a pandora's box you have now opened, to say the least.

As a registered and practising psychologist but also someone with one foot in the commercial side of the industry as well, I am of course curious about the questions raised. I will attempt to contribute to the conversation where and when but suffice to say that because of the limited size of the industry I am doubtful if there are any real evidence based research that could shed light on some of these question - it would be a matter of extrapolating some general theories and trying to get to some plausible hypothesis.

So I will be following the thread with interest...

Stefan

 

[Mike Lavigne]

winning. competition. attention. fitting in. nothing so deep really. hard wired. PHd from the school of hard knocks.....5 decades of auto biz management.

we learn it when we compete for our parent's attention from the cradle. when i hire people it's the first thing i look for; not everyone can get motivated equally. or wants to be a part of a winning team. and these days we have participation trophies so this gets pushed down.......so i have to look harder to find the on fire one's.

we become children again as audiophiles......opens the door again to our base drives.

of course, there is love of music, love of pretty things, drive to collect, and enjoyment of friends also as parts of our motivations.

 

[bonzo75]

Wow Ron, what a pandora's box you have now opened, to say the least.

As a registered and practising psychologist but also someone with one foot in the commercial side of the industry as well, I am of course curious about the questions raised. I will attempt to contribute to the conversation where and when but suffice to say that because of the limited size of the industry I am doubtful if there are any real evidence based research that could shed light on some of these question - it would be a matter of extrapolating some general theories and trying to get to some plausible hypothesis.

So I will be following the thread with interest...

Stefan

Are you available for online consultations, if so this forum has many patients

 

[andromedaaudio]

Stefan .

U can make money on both sides of the trade .
You can first sell the gear .
plus do psychological consulting for the 30 - 40 % who arent happy with the purchase after a month or 2 ..

 

[andromedaaudio]

Stefan indeed we have lots of work here.
We also have audiophiles here with imaginary systems .
They pretend to have a system which needs upgrading ,but in reality they dont have any .

Good luck with that

 

[Stefan]

Stefan indeed we have lots of work here.
We also have audiophiles here with imaginary systems .
They pretend to have a system which needs upgrading ,but in reality they dont have any .

Good luck with that

To be complete honest I have tried as much as I can to ring-fence the 2 fields. Hifi was supposed to be a good escape from my profession but there is no denying that the 2 fields of interest sometimes overlap. My attention is not so much centred around the question that Ron raised, not that those are not important, they are, but I am quite occupied by the questions about the objectivity vs subjectivity debate in the audiophile community. Maybe taken issue with the objective school sometimes that over emphasise the absolute standard but undervalue the rest of the "chain" of creating meaning. Questions how personality influence what we hear, how our subconscious come into play when we hear sound/music, etc? As we learn more about neuropsychology and how our senses work in tandem and can't be isolated for example and how this all impact on our shared field of interest are fascinating to me. The so called "scientific school", ignore the last leg of the process or chain, the unique personal, out of convenience I believe. If you are going to say that you "scientific" in your interest in the field of music reproduction, you should not define your field of interest so narrowly that you exclude the more fuzzy and messy field of the person at the end of the chain.

For sure a can of worms

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...clearly trying to "perfect" things in my hobby says more about me, than my hobby. Hey, I'm not paying you for that!

 

[Stefan]

...clearly trying to "perfect" things in my hobby says more about me, than my hobby. Hey, I'm not paying you for that!

Or the phallic symbolism of a big speaker

 

[Fishfood]

Stefan .

U can make money on both sides of the trade .
You can first sell the gear .
plus do psychological consulting for the 30 - 40 % who arent happy with the purchase after a month or 2 ..

Not a psychologist but I deal with sound and music as part of my job daily:

I think the thing to really study, or at least tangentially with our forum psychological round table is psychoacoustics because I think there's a whole side of this that's just our ears/brains become impressed/aroused by an upgrade.... and then getting used to it so it doesn't provide the same pleasure anymore. That sends us looking for the next component. I don't mean to be sexual here but music and the reproduction of music to the point of feeling an actual performance goes right to the pleasure centers of the brain.

 

[DaveC]

My $.02...

Major purchases like cars, high-$ audio systems, etc. are deeply emotional and often seen by the ego as a representation of the self. It's similar to adapting spiritual or political beliefs, these things are conflated with who we are. This means that critiques of these things are felt as an attack on the person, taken as a personal affront. OTOH, those making the critique often take any argument on their own position as a personal affront, when it's perfectly reasonable to want to debate and absorb information, and process it before changing beliefs.

I used to be in sales after I took a break from engineering school. I was a top salesman at an electronics store at the national level, coming in 3rd in a sales competition that involved hundreds of salespeople. I would have won a vacation to the Virgin Islands, lol... Then I briefly sold cars with relatively poor results. In hindsight I understand that electronics like TVs, computers, etc. are sold on an objective basis and I was good at finding people the right product and demo'ing it. I failed at selling cars because it's mostly emotional and if you give people facts about cars that don't match their beliefs they won't buy from you. This is why dealers often hire salespeople that know nothing about cars. IMO, high end audio is a lot more like buying cars.

People recommend what they own because the purchase decision was considered beforehand, and they have already went through the purchase process, which involves forming beliefs. This forms bias, but online it can be hard to distinguish between whether the recommendation comes from pride of ownership or is an objective recommendation without bias. I think it's always a combination of the two as it's impossible to fully detach yourself from bias, but some are more successful than others in understanding and overcoming bias. Some understand their beliefs are not who they are which makes it much easier to reduce bias.

I believe it's key to understand that your ego and your beliefs are malleable and do not define who you really are. Given convincing evidence it's healthy to change your beliefs to align with reality. Beliefs that do not align with reality are a cause of suffering, and we can have two mechanisms that can change beliefs. One is a conscious choice given evidence, the second is painful life experiences that get worse over time and eventually it will become more painful to hold onto these beliefs rather than change them. This is why many people repeat the same mistakes, have the same destructive relationships, etc. a number of times, and they also usually get more painful as they are repeated.

 

[brad225]

I think it is all of the suggested possibilities.

I remember I went to my first meeting of our local audiophile group. It was clear who was just into the enjoyment of their own equipment and what others had assembled.

Then there was the balance of them
. As I described it to my wife when I returned home, it was a "Mine is Bigger than Yours Gathering" AKA ego.