Gratitude at Work Prospectively Predicts Lower Workplace Materialism: A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study in Chile

Jesús Unanue, Xavier Oriol, Juan Carlos Oyanedel, Andrés Rubio and Wenceslao Unanue
Additional contact information
Jesús Unanue: Programa de Doctorado en Educación y Sociedad, Facultad de Educación y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago 7550000, Chile
Xavier Oriol: Research Institute on Quality of Life, University of Girona, 17004 Girona, Spain
Juan Carlos Oyanedel: Facultad de Educación y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago 7550000, Chile
Andrés Rubio: Facultad de Economía y Negocios, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago 7550000, Chile
Wenceslao Unanue: Escuela de Negocios, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago 7941169, Chile

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: Materialism at work refers to a higher importance attached to extrinsic (e.g., money, fame, image) versus intrinsic (self-development, affiliation, community participation) employees’ ‘aspirations’. Research from self-determination theory has consistently found that materialism at work is strongly detrimental for both employees and organizations. For example, materialism is negatively associated with lower job satisfaction and engagement and positively associated with higher turnover intentions and job insecurity. Unfortunately, there are no viable strategies for reducing materialism in the workplace yet. In this sense, based on emergent research in psychology, we theorized that dispositional gratitude—a key construct within the Positive Organizational Psychology field—could be a protecting factor against materialism. Further, we conducted a three-wave longitudinal design among a large sample of Chilean workers ( n = 1841) to test, for the first time, the longitudinal link between gratitude and materialism. We used two novel methodologies: A cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) to test between-person changes and a trait-state-occasion model (TSO) to test within-person changes. We found that both the CLPM as well as the TSO models showed that gratitude at work prospectively predicted further lower workplace materialism. Specifically, the CLPM shows that individuals with higher than average gratitude at Ti, are more likely to show lower than average materialism at Ti+1. The TSO shows that individuals with a higher than their usual level of gratitude at Ti are more likely to show a lower than their usual level of materialism at Ti+1. Important implications for materialism research as well as for the Positive Organizational Psychology field are discussed.

Keywords: materialism at work; gratitude at work; longitudinal study; Chile (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3787/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3787/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:7:p:3787-:d:530358

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().