Adults display deep emotional attachments to material objects. As
James (1890) observed, people's self-concepts are often so connected
to their belongings that the destruction or loss of those objects is
experienced as a personal injury. Although individuals derive satisfaction
from acquiring and interacting with objects, an excessive
valuing of belongings can have negative long-term consequences for
psychological health (e.g., Kasser, 2002). It is therefore important to
understand the motives behind object attachment.
The current research addresses this issue by building on attachment
theory, which posits that people have a need for psychological security
provided by close others (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Research shows that
when attachment security is threatened, one compensatory strategy is
attachment to non-human targets. Building on this work, we hypothesize
that people attach to objects, at least in part, to compensate for
the perception that close others are insufficiently reliable sources of
security. We test this hypothesis in three studies.