The Relationship between Materialistic Aspirations and Distinct Aspects of Psychological Well-being in a UK sample

The purpose of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of how materialistic aspirations are related to distinct aspects of psychological well-being. Research has consistently found a negative relationship between materialistic goals and well-being, but a review of the literature identified that the measures of wellbeing used in the majority of studies were measures of what Keyes (2002) describes as “subjective well-being” or “hedonic happiness”. Criticisms of these types of measures are that they fixate too much on the momentary experience of pleasure and don’t take into account what is meaningful and or what contributes to long lasting fulfilment. Very little research was found investigating the impact of materialism on “eudaimonic” well-being, which is found through doing what is worthwhile and realising ones potential and has been found to have a longer lasting impact on overall well-being (Huta & Ryan, 2010). To address this gap in the literature, a convenience sample of 113 adult subjects in the UK were recruited through Facebook and asked to respond to the Aspiration Index and the Psychological wellbeing scale. The relative importance placed on extrinsic (materialistic) and intrinsic aspirations was compared to the six dimensions of psychological well-being. In line with previous research, higher importance placed on materialistic aspirations for wealth, status and image were found to be negatively correlated with all aspects of psychological well-being. However, the strongest and only statistically significant negative correlation was between extrinsic aspirations and positive relations with others (r = -.256, p< 0.01). Positive relationships with other people form a central component of many theories of wellbeing and so this negative relationship may help to explain why materialistic aspirations are so consistently found to be negatively correlated to a variety of measures of well-being. Further research is needed to explore this relationship as no causation could be inferred. DOI : Coming Soon Corresponding Author: Itai Ivtzan, Senior Lecturer Positive Psychology, Programme Leader: MAPP, UEL, London E15 4LZ, Stratford, Office AE.3.23, Tel. +44 (0)20 8223 4384, Email: i.ivtzan@uel.ac.uk.


Materialism and Well-being
The question of whether the pursuit of money and possessions can lead us towards "the good life" has been asked for centuries (Kasser, 2003). Religious sages and philosophers have claimed that focussing on material possessions is a false path to happiness, while at the same time we are bombarded everyday with images on television, adverts and the internet telling us that owning the right products and styling ourselves with the right image will lead to happiness and success (Kasser, 2003). So far the evidence seems to suggest the sages were right after all. At a macro level, the "Easterlin Paradox" has shown us that despite increasing wealth within nations such as the UK and USA over the last 50 years, the wellbeing of these populations has remained stubbornly flat (Easterlin, 1974 (Belk, 1984;Kasser & Ryan, 1993a; Richins & Dawson, 1992a). Since then, studies have demonstrated a relationship between materialism and physical illness (Kasser & Ryan, 1996), mental illness (Cohen & Cohen, 1996) Keyes, 1995). This study aims to address this gap by correlating measures of materialism with the six facets of psychological wellbeing as defined by Ryff & Keyes (1995). This scale was chosen because it is designed to measure a broader, eudaimonic definition of well-being and it is also possible to correlate materialistic aspiration scores with six distinct aspects of psychological wellbeing which may help to give a more nuanced understanding of this relationship.

What is Wellbeing?
Research into psychological well-being and what it means to be "well" has been organised into two main streams of enquiry: "hedonic" well-being, which is associated with positive affect and is achieved through the pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment and comfort, and "eudaimonic" wellbeing, associated with realising ones potential and is achieved through seeking to develop the best in oneself (Huta & Ryan, 2010 can not be used interchangeably (Keyes et al., 2002).
This study will use Ryff and Keyes (1995)  Of course there have been many other studies into materialism and well-being, most notably perhaps by Tim Kasser which he summarises in his book "the high price of materialism" (Kasser, 2003). Kasser (2003) has investigated the impact of materialism on psychological needs, specifically on our needs for security, feelings of self worth, relationships, autonomy and authenticity and has found a negative relationship between these needs and materialistic values (Kasser, 2003). He suggests that pursuing materialistic goals does not satisfy these needs and so leads to lower levels of wellbeing. Kasser's (2003)  The Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996) incorporates a variety of materialistic aspirations including financial success, attractive appearance and social status. These are categorised as extrinsic aspirations. The relative importance of these values is compared to intrinsic aspirations for self-acceptance, affiliation, community feeling and physical fitness (Kasser & Ryan, 1996).

Statement of Research Problem
This research is interested in the relationship between materialistic values and the distinct aspects of psychological well-being when well-being is defined in eudaimonic terms. The research also seeks to understand whether materialistic values could have a stronger relationship with some components of psychological well-being than others. This is useful to not only understand if there is a relationship between materialistic values and eudaimonic well-being, but also to gain understanding as to which aspects of well-being are more or less impacted by materialistic aspirations.
The research hypothesis is that 1) higher relative centrality of extrinsic aspirations will correlate negatively with all six aspects of psychological wellbeing 2) that higher relative centrality of intrinsic aspirations will correlate positively with all six aspects of psychological wellbeing. 3) higher relative centrality of extrinsic aspirations will have a particularly strong negative correlation with positive relations with others.

Method Design
A quantitative correlational design was used where a survey combining the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996)  Achieve psychological growth, autonomy and self regard "You will know and accept who you really are"

Affiliation
Have satisfying relationships with family and friends "You will have good friends you can count on" Community Feeling Improve the world through activism or generosity "You will work for the betterment of society" Physical Fitness Feel healthy and free of illness "You will be physically healthy"

Extrinsic Aspirations
Financial Success Be wealthy and materially successful "You will have a lot of expensive possessions"

Attractive appearance
Look attractive in terms of body, clothing and fashion "You will successfully hide the signs of ageing" Social recognition Be famous, well known and admired "Your name will be known by many people"

Materialism
The 42 item Aspiration index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996) was used to assess materialism (see appendix F for the full Aspiration Index questionnaire). This assesses the relative importance of seven types of future goals (4 intrinsic and 3 extrinsic) in relation to each other (Kasser & Ryan, 1996). Respondents were presented with 42 suggested goals for the future and asked to rate each item in terms of how important it was to them that they would happen in the future. They rated the importance of each item from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely important). Each item is related to either an intrinsic aspiration, divided into the categories of selfacceptance, affiliation, community feeling or physical fitness, or to an extrinsic aspiration, categorised as financial success, attractive appearance and social recognition. See Table 1 for a description of each category with an example item.
Seven subscale scores were obtained by computing the mean of each aspiration sub-type. The relative importance placed on each type of aspiration was found by computing the mean total importance of all aspirations (regardless of content), which was then subtracted from the score for each of the 7 subscale scores. This gave a mean corrected score for each subscale showing the relative centrality of each type of  (Kasser & Ryan, 1996).

Psychological Wellbeing Scale
The

Data Analysis
To ensure that the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic aspirations was supported within the Aspiration Index, a higher order factor analysis was conducted for the seven aspiration subscale scores.   be that someone who has less nurturing relationships seeks to find security in material comforts and seeks to build their self esteem through status (Kasser, 2003;Kasser et al., 1995).
The results from this study support self- Research has also shown that placing importance on other people is valuable for our own well-being, for example, studies have demonstrated that showing kindness and compassion to others brings benefits to our own well-being, health and longevity (Post, 2005) and that spending money on others is more beneficial for our emotional health than spending it on ourselves (Aknin et al., 2013). Other research has demonstrated that the relationship is bi-directional as it was found that people were more likely to engage in helping behaviours if they were experiencing positive emotions themselves (Isen & Levin, 1972) and that when we experience more positive emotions, we are likely to feel more close social connections to others and even show less racial bias (Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005). All these strands of

Limitations of the Research
Another caveat to this research is also that the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996)  A key criticism of Positive Psychology as a discipline is that there is too much emphasis on an individuals influence on their own well-being whilst ignoring wider political, economic and cultural factors that can significantly impact on an individuals well-being