Materialism and Well-Being Revisited: The Impact of Personality
Małgorzata E. Górnik-Durose ()
Additional contact information
Małgorzata E. Górnik-Durose: University of Silesia in Katowice
Journal of Happiness Studies, 2020, vol. 21, issue 1, No 15, 305-326
Abstract:
Abstract Although the negative link between materialism and well-being has been confirmed by results from many empirical studies, mechanisms underlying this association still remain partially unexplained. The issue is addressed in this article in two ways. Firstly, the nature of the components of materialism is examined, and secondly—the article demonstrates that personality (particularly neuroticism and narcissism) is one of the important factors linking materialism and well-being. The article presents the results of three empirical studies, in which three main assumptions were verified—that the components of materialism, i.e. acquisition centrality, acquisition as a pursuit of happiness and possession-defined success, have dissimilar impacts on well-being, that materialists with high and low levels of neuroticism and narcissism differ with regard to well-being, and that neuroticism and narcissism mediate the relationship between materialism and well-being. The studies were based on self-reports and utilized well-known, established questionnaire measures of materialism, personality and well-being. The results showed that each component of materialism was associated with well-being in a slightly different way. Of the three possession-defined happiness was the strongest predictor of all aspects of well-being examined and the centrality component was not associated with any of them. Materialists with a high level of neuroticism and low level of grandiose narcissism experienced diminished well-being in comparison to materialism with a low level of neuroticism and high level of grandiose narcissism. Neuroticism and grandiose narcissism were both significant mediators, acting contrary to each other—neuroticism lowered well-being, whereas grandiose narcissism elevated it.
Keywords: Materialism; Personality; Neuroticism; Grandiose narcissism; Vulnerable narcissism; Well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-019-00089-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
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:spr:jhappi:v:21:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10902-019-00089-8
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10902-019-00089-8
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave
More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().