Materialism and self-presentational styles

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Abstract

To examine the images that materialistic people wish to convey, we first asked 177 participants to complete the Richins and Dawson (1992) materialism scale and an adjective checklist that assessed five self-presentational styles. In a subsequent experiment, we primed 210 participants to experience one of five self-presentational styles and asked them to complete a state materialism scale. We expected that materialists would tend to avoid supplication and ingratiation, but would self-promote and intimidate. Across both studies, results supported the supplication and ingratiation hypotheses, but failed to show any link between either self-promotion or intimidation and materialism. We discuss how personal insecurity may be a precursor to materialism. We also discuss future research avenues with respect to probing the interrelationship between materialism, insecurity, and self-presentational considerations.

Section snippets

Materialism and self-presentational styles

Materialism is “… a value representing the individual's orientation toward the role of possessions in life, serving to guide the types and quantities of goods purchased” (Mick, 1996, p. 108). Although previous research (e.g., Christopher & Schlenker, 2004; Mick, 1996) has suggested that materialism is related to a tendency to manage the impressions one makes on others, it is not clear what types of impressions materialistic individuals wish to convey. The current research explicitly assessed

Participants

The participants in this study were 177 individuals (67 women and 110 men), 44.1% of whom were married, 39.0% were single, and the remainder divorced or widowed. Slightly less than 55% had no children while the remainder had between 1 and 7 children. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 81 years. The first two authors asked a total of six personal acquaintances to distribute questionnaires to residents of their neighborhoods and members of civic organizations to which they belonged. All

Participants

A total of 210 undergraduates (126 women and 84 men) completed this experiment in exchange for either credit toward a course requirement or for extra credit toward a course mark. All were students at either Anderson College (SC) or Albion College (MI) and were recruited via sign-up sheets in the Psychology Department. Participants ranged in age from 18 years, 3 months to 20 years, 4 months. The experiment utilized a between-subjects design with five self-presentational conditions [intimidation (

General discussion

Previous research (e.g., Christopher & Schlenker, 2004; Mick, 1996) has established a link between materialism and self-presentational concerns. The purpose of the current research was to extend these investigations by exploring the types of impressions materialistic people wish to convey to others. Using the five self-presentational styles delineated by Jones and Pittman (1982) and operationalized by Leary et al. (1998), we expected that materialists would want to avoid supplication,

Acknowledgements

Barry R. Schlenker, Terell P. Lasane, Darcy Crain, and Jason R. Jones contributed helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this manuscript. We are also grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful suggestions during the review process.

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