Materialism and Relationships

Materialism and Relationship Quality

Studies with adults and adolescents have shown that the more people endorse materialistic values, the lower the quality of their interpersonal relationships. For example, materialistic values are associated with having relationships characterized by lower trust and acceptance, and by more jealousy and emotional volatility; these findings occur with both self- and peer-reports of relationship quality. Materialism is also associated with lower marital satisfaction among couples and higher conflict among parents and their children. People who strongly value money, image, and status also tend to feel more alienated, detached, and separate from those around them. It may not be surprising, then, that adolescents who put a high priority on “being rich” are more likely to be diagnosed with personality disorders indicative of problematic interpersonal relationships and with disorders involving antisocial activities.

Three Explanations

One explanation for these findings is that when people care a great deal about materialistic pursuits, they tend to care less about close interpersonal relationships and other people in general. Cross-cultural research on values and goals consistently demonstrates that self-interested, materialistic aims typically stand in opposition to the kinds of values that promote good interpersonal relationships. For example, materialistic values tend to oppose benevolence and affiliation values, which concern being “helpful” and “loyal,” obtaining “true friendship” and “mature love,” and having close, committed relationships. Across various cultures, materialistic values and goals also typically oppose universalism and community feeling aims such as working for “social justice” and “equality,” and trying to make the world a better place. Experimental results in the United States even suggest that activating materialistic values by making people think about money and possessions may cause them to orient away from friendly, helpful, cooperative acts. [Page 1076]For example, in one study with 4- and 5-year-olds, children randomly assigned to watch a commercial promoting a fun toy were more likely to decline the opportunity to play with their friends so they could instead play with the toy. These subjects were also more likely to choose to play with a “not so nice” boy who had the toy than with a “nice boy” who did not. In a different series of studies, U.S. college students randomly assigned to create sentences out of money-related words (as opposed to neutral words) later spent less time helping an experimenter pick up pencils that had been dropped and less time helping a confused confederate. They also donated smaller portions of their honorarium to charity. Such results suggest that it is quite difficult for individuals to simultaneously strive for materialistic and relationship goals and that relationships tend to lose out when materialistic goals are activated in people's minds (as happens so often in capitalistic, consumer culture).

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