Saturday, June 25, 2016

Lifestyle and Materialism

We live in a culture that relentlessly bombards us with messages extolling the virtues of things.  Have you reserved an IPhone 7?  Do you have an IPhone 6?  Well, then what type cellphone do you have?  Please don’t embarrass yourself by telling me if you have a flip-phone.

How about your house?  How many bedrooms and bathrooms?  Does your car have a rear-view camera?  Does it boast rain-sensing windshield wipers that automatically turn on whenever it “perceives” drizzle?

If you don’t have the latest and greatest, why not?  Don’t you deserve the best?  You are no less entitled than your in-the-know colleagues, friends, and relatives, are you?

If you are materialistic, you must be young.  After all, everybody knows that young people feel entitled.  Older persons have the wisdom to know what is and is not important in life.  Research undoubtedly would support the age-materialism relationship, wouldn’t it?

Maybe not.  At least that is what Esther D. T. Jaspers and Rik G. M. Pieters (2016) discovered.  Although they did confirm that people generally believe youngsters are more materialistic than oldsters, the carefully crafted research revealed more nuanced conclusions.  Materialism did decrease from younger to older ages, but it increased slightly again for persons approaching the oldest ages.  That is, materialism exhibited an age-sensitive curvilinear relationship, being higher among the younger and older subjects and lower among the middle-aged ones.  As to the specifics, the desire to acquire material goods declined from young adulthood to middle adulthood, with 55-year-olds as the least materialistic cohort.  Possession materialism, in which subjects defined success with reference to their material goods, also decreased with age, reaching its nadir at about age 62 and increasing slowly thereafter.

What are the implications then for materialism and life?  Those who relentlessly pursue material goods can become slaves to their acquisition avarice, and those who define success by their “toys” are enslaved as well.  The expression “everything that you own owns you” is worth your reflection.

Materialism encourages us to become item competitive with others in our reference groups, and it instigates stress by driving us to work excessive hours in order to buy goods that quickly lose their special appeal.  Moreover, those who covet material items become fixated on determining the items' economic values (Pchelina & Howella, 2014) and determining economic value often is a vexing and virtually impossible task.  The more item choice we have, the more overwhelming and even paralyzing choosing becomes (Swartz, 2005) —another stressor inherent in our preoccupation with things.    

Capitalistic culture promotes relentless materialism.  Everyone of course needs and wants material goods.  There is nothing wrong with that.  But when lives are built around materialism, serious problems result.  Regardless of our age, we need to refrain from acquiring for the sake of acquiring.  And we must resist the temptation to define ourselves by our possessions.  That can be a challenge for all, including me.

References

Jaspers, E. & Pieters, R. (2016).  Materialism across the lifespan: An age-period-cohort analysis.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.   No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000092.


Pchelina, P.  & Howella, R.  (2014).  The hidden cost of value-seeking: People do not accurately forecast the economic benefits of experiential purchases.   The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9, 4, 322-334.


Schwartz, B. (2005).  The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.  New York: Harper.

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