The psychology of why we hate cheap things

For most of history, there truly was a strong correlation between cost and value.

We tend to associate cheap prices and lack of value because for a while, the expensive products were indeed the better products.

"The higher the price, the better things tended to be, because there was simply no way both for prices to be low and quality high," explains The School of Life. "Everything had to be made by hand, by expensively trained artisans with raw materials that were immensely difficult to transport."

The Industrial Revolution changed things.

The relationship between price and value held true until the end of the 18th century, with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, when we figured out how to make high quality products at cheap prices, thanks to advances in technology.

"However, despite the greatness of these efforts, instead of making wonderful experiences universally available, industrialization has inadvertently produced a different effect," explains The School of Life. "It seemed to rob certain experiences of their loveliness, interest, and worth."

Today, society essentially disallows us from getting excited over cheap things. It would be considered strange to get hyped over a $3 carton of eggs from a chicken, yet we're allowed to get giddy over caviar — a different type of egg — because of its price tag.

"We've been looking at prices in the wrong way," argues The School of Life. "We've allowed them to set how much excitement we're allowed to have in given areas, but prices were never meant to be like this. We're breathing too much life into them, and therefore dulling too many of our responses to the inexpensive world. We are already a good deal richer than we are encouraged to think we are."

What's the fix?

If we could channel the way we thought as children — when we had no idea what we were "supposed" to like and did not understand money — then price would never define value for us.

"We can't directly go back to childhood," The School of Life says. "But we have got people who can help us in this area: artists. They are the experts at recording and communicating their enthusiasms, which, like children, can take them in slightly unexpected directions. They offer a revolution in appreciation, a far deeper process, that could get us to notice what we already have to hand."

Instead of reducing prices, artists raise the levels of appreciation for "cheap things," helping us recognize that we can get a lot of great things for very little money.

Watch the entire explanation below:

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