Why am I so sentimental?

CrowdScience listener Kerry wants to find out why we feel sentimental about the things we own and why it’s so hard to part with them.

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CrowdScience listener Kerry started thinking about his sentimental attachment to his possessions when he began sorting through an old trunk, full of objects from his past. He wants to know why we get so attached to things that often have no use anymore and why it’s so hard to give them away.

Anand Jagatia investigates why the objects we accumulate during our lives mean so much to us.

He talks to psychologists Mary Dozier and Melissa Norberg and finds out that our possessions offer stability and comfort from the earliest age. That keepsake you brought home from your holiday may also stir memories about days gone by - and that’s one reason why we may find it hard to part with the things we own, because they help us to access our emotions. And the items we collect through our lives can come to represent our identity too.

Anand visits the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia, where people from all over the world have donated possessions from relationships that ended, whether romantic or family, and discovers that sentimental attachment is universal.

Presenter Anand Jagatia

Producers Jo Glanville and Imaan Moin

Editor Ben Motley

(Photo: Memories box in book shelf - Credit: Jan Hakan Dahlstrom via Getty Images)

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