What leads people to care about materialistic values and engage in consumptive behaviors?

The research that we’ve done over the last 20-some years suggests that there are two main sources that focus people around materialistic values. The first is social modeling. Humans grow up in a cultural milieu that suggests they can have a happy, meaningful, and successful life if they make a lot of money and buy a lot of stuff. The more that people are exposed to these materialistic values, the more likely it is that they will value money and possessions. The second source of materialism is insecurity. There are a variety of insecurities or threats that are associated with materialism, including poverty, family instability, and death anxiety. Becker’s fundamental insight, of course, was that the fear of death is an extremely potent source of insecurity that motivates individuals to engage in behaviors the culture says are valuable. As Becker suggested, because humans live in a consumer culture that models and values materialism, insecurity stemming from death anxiety can orient individuals towards materialistic values and behavior. Studies have found that when individuals briefly think about their own mortality, it leads them to behave in more materialistic ways, such as buying more goods and acting greedier in resource-dilemma games.

What are the personal, social, and ecological consequences of having materialistic values?

Research suggests that those who value materialism have lower personal well-being, life satisfaction, and physical and psychological health than those who believe that materialistic pursuits are relatively unimportant. The more that materialism is at the center of one’s life, the more one’s quality of life declines. We’ve seen this pattern in kids, adults, and older people, as well as across cultures. Materialistic values are also associated with less pro-social values and behavior, such as caring about other people, one’s community, and the environment. Materialistic values can be conceptualized as a set of self-enhancing and self-interested goals that oftentimes conflict with pro-social values. There is a dynamic tension between pro-social and materialistic values, so if materialistic values are activated, pro-social values are suppressed, and vice-versa. That’s part of why we think that individuals who endorse materialistic values exhibit less pro-social behavior and have worse interpersonal relationships, have lower levels of empathy, and are more prejudiced. We see a similar relationship between materialism and environmental concerns and behavior. Focusing on materialistic values suppresses environmental concerns, so the more materialistic a person is, the less she or he is likely to care about the environment and to engage in pro-environmental behavior such as recycling, turning off the lights, and voting for candidates on the basis of their environmental platforms.

…individuals who endorse materialistic values exhibit less pro-social behavior and have worse interpersonal relationships, have lower levels of empathy, and are more prejudiced.

How can we weaken the hold that death-denying materialistic motives have on individuals and culture, and minimize our vulnerability to social and environmental problems?

First, we can decrease the extent to which individuals are socialized into materialism. I am a Board member of the Campaign for a Commercial-free Childhood, which aims to end child-targeted marketing, a practice known to make kids more materialistic and to undermine their well-being. We can also reduce the amount of marketing in cities and public spaces. For example, some cities around the world have reduced the number of billboards in downtown areas. On an individual level, we can also unsubscribe from commercial magazines, use ad blocker on our computer, and mute advertisements when we watch television. We can also work to activate individuals’ pro-social and intrinsic values, such as the desire for strong interpersonal relationships with family and friends and to help the community; as I noted earlier, these values are at odds with self-interested, materialistic values, and so should work to suppress materialism. Research also shows that interventions in which people reflect on and discuss their intrinsic values lead to decreases in materialistic values, which, in turn, increases their overall well-being. This suggests that it may be helpful for people to ask themselves whether their life is more focused on intrinsic values, such as their relationships and the desire to help individuals living in poverty and the polar bears, or on materialistic values, such as acquiring possessions and status. From a Becker perspective, if we could create a cultural shift towards a society that cares about intrinsic values more than materialistic values, that could increase the likelihood that individuals will try to symbolically manage the threat of death by engaging in behaviors that help the environment, increase the quality of interpersonal relationships, and positively affect overall well-being, rather than through shopping and money-making.  

Second, Mike Prentice, Ken Sheldon, and I recently published a paper suggesting that deeply engaging with one’s own mortality can actually decrease materialism. In these studies, participants are not asked to just briefly think about their mortality like in typical TMT studies; instead, they are asked to consider what their own mortality means for them and those around them, and to do so over several days. Essentially, we are trying to prompt individuals to meaningfully engage with the fact of their eventual death, rather than defend against that idea.  We found that when people high in openness to experience do this kind of death engagement, their materialistic values decrease and their intrinsic values increase. We think this occurs because deeply contemplating one’s mortality helps an person to realize that money and status are less important than helping other people, having strong relationships, growing as individuals, and helping the environment. These findings support the notion that death denial is the real reason that death awareness motivates maladaptive defenses, such as materialism and environmental destruction. If people would instead actually engage with and accept their inevitable mortality, death can prompt them to reevaluate how they would like to live their life and orient them away from materialism and towards intrinsic values. On some level, people are of course always going to be afraid of death, but if people engage with death in a deep, reflective, and ongoing fashion, it may make it less threatening. Humans could therefore begin to respond to death by contemplating how to make our lives more satisfying and meaningful, as opposed to defending against death by engaging in culturally endorsed behaviors that destroy the Earth.