Cafe Venetia is a local coffee shop in Palo Alto. It serves Italian-style coffee including cafe lattes and espresso.
What makes this cafe special is its computer-free rule. On the patio wall, there is a sign that says “Computer Free Zone.” Each outdoor table has a small plate that reads “Computer-Free Table.”
The cafe encourages people to be present: read a book, have a conversation, or watch people pass by. The owner probably believes coffee should be enjoyed without the distraction of meetings or emails.
It is interesting that big tech companies like OpenAI and Google pull us deeper into virtual worlds, while a café in their own hometown encourages us to stay present.
Without these computer-free rules, we might easily get pulled into digital distractions through classic platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or newer AI agents like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Today, we need rules to create distance from the virtual world and enjoy something “unique, meaningful, and authentic.”
This article addresses a simple theoretical question of high substantive relevance: What makes a consumption experience special in a consumer’s mind? To answer this question, the authors report an extensive multi-method investigation involving a grounded theory analysis of numerous consumer narratives and in-depth interviews, a field survey, a scale development study, a natural language processing analysis of more than 3 million Yelp reviews, a preregistered multi-factor causal experiment (and its preregistered replication), a blind comparison of hundreds of matched visual Instagram posts by third-party observers, and several small application studies. The findings converge in identifying three major psychological pillars of what makes consumption experiences feel special to consumers, each pillar involving different facets: (a) uniqueness, which arises from the rarity, novelty, irreproducibility, personalization, exclusivity, ephemerality, and surpassing of expectations of the experience; (b) meaningfulness, which pertains to the personal significance of the experience in terms of symbolism, relationships, self-affirmation, and self-transformation; and (c) authenticity, which relates to the perceived genuineness and realness of the experience in terms of its psychological proximity to some original source, iconicity, human sincerity, and connection to nature. As illustrated in the General Discussion, the findings have important substantive implications for the engineering of hedonic consumption experiences.
Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described. Correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies then show that the MAAS measures a unique quality of consciousness that is related to a variety of well-being constructs, that differentiates mindfulness practitioners from others, and that is associated with enhanced self-awareness. An experience-sampling study shows that both dispositional and state mindfulness predict self-regulated behavior and positive emotional states. Finally, a clinical intervention study with cancer patients demonstrates that increases in mindfulness over time relate to declines in mood disturbance and stress.
