Why We Love the Things We Love with Aaron Ahuvia

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Sharon spends time speaking with Dr. Aaron Ahuvia, who is an expert on a specific kind of love: our love of things–things like places, objects, brands, and activities. The things we love tend to be part of our own identity: perhaps a part of our childhood, or something we spend a lot of time with. Aaron advocates for using our particular loves–poker, PEZ dispensers, sneakers, water sports–in leading us to others who share our common interests, and can be a catalyst in forging interpersonal relationships. But what makes us really love something? There’s a difference between finding value in an object or activity and really loving it. Ahuvia says one of three things needs to happen for us to feel a connection with a thing: the thing itself is anthropomorphic, or it connects us to another person, or it’s a part of our own identity. This fascinating discussion will have you wondering just why you love the things you love!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome, always happy to have you. Today I am sharing a conversation
0:06.1	with Professor Aaron Auvia and let me tell you the reason I wanted to have him on
0:10.6	the show. He has a new book coming out called The Things We Love.
0:15.2	How Our Passions Connect us and Make Us Who We Are. And you guys know that I have a passion for
0:24.3	variety of different kinds of animals, whales, owls, eagles, etc.
0:26.9	And it really piqued my curiosity about how the things we love
0:31.5	connect us and make us who we are. This is just a
0:34.8	fascinating conversation and I can't wait to share it with you. Let's dive in.
0:39.3	I'm Sharon McMahon and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast.
0:46.2	I am really excited to chat today
0:48.5	with Professor Erin Ahoovia who has written
0:51.4	a very interesting book that I think a lot of you are going to find really interesting too.
0:54.8	Thank you so much for coming.
0:56.8	It's my pleasure. Thanks so much for the opportunity.
0:59.5	Oh, tell everybody a little bit more about your background and I would love to hear the origin story of your book.
1:08.0	So I'm a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan Dearborn campus.
1:13.2	And the book is about the psychology of love,
1:17.6	but a very particular type of love,
1:20.0	which is when people love objects or activities or brands or places or all that stuff that except people.
1:29.3	And I've been working on this for a long time.
1:32.1	I started doing this research when I was a PhD student,
1:35.7	which was back right around 1990.
	...

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