Materialistic happiness menaces people’s meaning in life: A serial double mediation model reflecting the roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-1884614/v1

Background: People are holding stronger materialistic belief than before, especially in some developed regions in the world. Materialism refers to beliefs that equate materialistic possessions with happiness, success, and make it central to life. Extant research has widely shown that materialism threatens people’s well-being. Nevertheless, the evidence on how materialism influences meaning in life is less well-established. Within the realm of this area, we examined the relationship between materialism and meaning in life, as well as its potential mechanisms, under the framework of Self-Determination Theory.

Methods: Two cross-sectional online survey studies have been conducted to test the hypothesized serial double mediation model. In this model, we measured four constructs including people’s materialistic values, basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life. In Study 1, we collected data from a Chinese sample (N=190). In Study 2, we tried to replicate the findings from Study 1 by collecting a non-Chinese different-age Prolific sample (N=767).

Results: The results from Study 1 and Study 2 are consistent. We found that the relationship between materialistic happiness and meaning in life is serially mediated by basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being. The results confirm that materialistic happiness frustrates basic psychological needs, which threatens people’s subjective well-being then meaning in life. Nonetheless, same serial multiple mediation model is not observed from other two materialistic dimensions including materialistic centrality and materialistic success.

Conclusions: Materialistic happiness threatens people’s sense of meaning in life. This relationship can be explained under the framework of Self-Determination Theory. Issues such as how different types of happiness facilitate the constitution of meaning in life, and new investigation directions on materialism and meaning in life research have been discussed.

materialism

happiness

meaning in life

self-determination theory

subjective well-being

A good life: meaningful and happy

People desire to live a good life. According to the tripartite model suggested by Oishi and Westgate (1), a good life consists of three dimensions, including a sense of meaning in life, subjective happiness, and psychological richness.

Meaning in life is one of the eternal questions widely discussed in disciplines such as philosophy and psychology for centuries. The scientific definition of meaning in life has been inconclusive because of its subjective nature (2). Nonetheless, in recent years, psychologists have reached a scholarly consensus on the nature of meaning in life. The tripartite model suggests that meaning in life consists of three major components including purpose in life (e.g., having a future-oriented goal to achieve), comprehension in life (e.g., meaning making of one’s own life by understanding the linkage among different episodes in one’s life) and existential significance (e.g., a belief that your life is significant to others or to the society) (3–5). For instance, people who have better comprehension of their life, and understanding of themselves would tend to know their life more clearly. Such clarity towards their own lives facilitates the development of purpose in life, which may strengthen people’s life direction and engagement in life. By spending efforts to achieve purpose in life, the sense of existential significance will then be formed more firmly (5). A meaningful life must include a purpose. Purpose in life guides people’s direction as if it is a compass of people’s life (6). People with a clear sense of purpose in life enjoy various advantages such as better health condition and longer life expectancy (7, 8), and greater chance for success such as in academic excellence (9). Meaning and purpose are critical for us to live an optimal life and it is widely accepted as a central human concern (10), bringing us a sense of societal contribution (1). Meaning in life itself also brings along numerous advantages, particularly in the health domain such as less burnout (11), fewer chance to suffer from cardiovascular diseases (12) and fewer suicidal ideation (13).

A happy life is distinguished from a meaningful life (1). Happiness, or well-being in the literature, is defined by both hedonic and eudaimonic senses (14–16). Hedonic well-being (aka. subjective well-being, SWB) suggests that happiness is comprised of three components including positive cognitive evaluation on life (i.e., life satisfaction), presence of positive affect and absence of negative affect (15). On the other hand, eudaimonic well-being (aka. psychological well-being, PWB), indicates that happiness is more related to self-actualization (15). According to Ryff’s six-factor PWB model (16), it encompasses six important factors including purpose in life, autonomy, positive relations with others, environmental mastery, personal growth, and self-acceptance. Diener and colleagues (14) argued that the word ‘happiness’ is a manifestation of subjective well-being, which implies a life with joy, comfort, stability, resources (e.g., time and money) and attainment of goals is happy (1, 14). On the contrary, Aristotle’s eudaimonism suggests that happiness should be achieved through virtue expression and self-actualization, in which the journey might be suffering because the goal actualization process is challenging, diminishing the hedonic happiness (14). Although eudaimonic well-being is not necessarily equal to meaning in life, we argue that it is closer to meaning in life than subjective well-being, as both eudaimonic well-being and meaning in life address the importance of having a life purpose. Therefore, to make the variable happiness more distinguishable from meaning in life, in this paper, we decided to define happiness by subjective well-being instead of psychological well-being.

The third dimension of a good life is psychological richness, which means that a life is better if people have more fruitful life experiences with life changing perspectives (1). However, in this paper we are only interested in meaning in life and subjective well-being. Please refer to other articles regarding psychological richness.

Materialism

As mentioned previously, hedonic happiness is about life satisfaction and greater positive-to-negative affect ratio, in which materialistic enjoyment may play a significant role. For example, although the relationship is controversial, subjective well-being has been shown to be related to income (17, 18) and ‘cash on hand’ (19). It is arguably true that to a certain extent with more financial resources, people can enjoy more hedonic experiences such as owning luxury lifestyle. Some people hence particularly believe that happiness is mainly achieved by materialistic possessions (i.e., materialistic happiness). According to Richins (20), materialistic happiness is one of the three manifestations of materialism, the other two include equating materialistic possessions with success (i.e., materialistic success) and making materialistic possessions central to life (i.e., materialistic centrality).

Materialism is getting more influential especially in rich societies, for example, in the capitalist USA, the ‘totemic’ American Dream strongly ties with one’s financial success (21, 22); people become more materialistic in the rapidly developing China as well. According to a survey conducted by The Ipsos (23), China has been ranked as the most materialistic country among twenties and 71% of Chinese respondents agreed that success should be measured by the number of materialistic possessions, compared with 34% from other countries (24). Although it is widely shown that materialistic values threaten people’s well-being (25, 26), studies examining how materialistic values affect people’s meaning in life, especially in Asian (e.g., Chinese) context, are still limited.

Self-Determination Theory

Self-Determination Theory (SDT hereafter) is a widely recognized motivation theory (27, 28), which has theorized that human’s goal pursuit can be categorized on a continuum of internalized regulation level along the spectrum of amotivation (non-regulation) and intrinsic motivation (intrinsically regulated). According to SDT, there are two types of goal pursuits which governed by controlled or autonomous motivation. Controlled motivation can be found in actions that fulfil extrinsic constraints such as praises from others or comply with others’ expectations. On the other hand, autonomous motivation is fully regulated by self-volition, that is, actions are motivated by meaning, enjoyment and congruence with personal identity. Autonomous motivation has been widely shown to positively predict people’s well-being (27). SDT also emphasizes the importance of basic psychological needs satisfaction. There are three basic psychological needs namely relatedness (e.g., building good and healthy relationship with others), competence (e.g., skills and capabilities development) and autonomy (e.g., personal functioning under self-volition). As basic psychological needs satisfaction facilitates the internal regulation of goal pursuit, it is also positively correlated with better well-being (27).

SDT makes significant contribution in showing the antecedents of well-being (e.g., autonomous motivation and basic psychological needs satisfaction covered above), we believe that SDT may possibly provide us with a proper theoretical framework to explore and explain the relationship between materialism and meaning in life. The main objectives in this study are to 1) investigate into the relationship between materialism and meaning in life, and to 2) explore the mediators, such as basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being, governing the relationship under the SDT framework. Results from this study may shed lights on the mechanisms regarding the constitution of meaning in life. Six hypotheses are driven in a serial double mediation model to explain the relationship between materialism and meaning in life (See Fig. 1).

A hypothesized serial double mediation model

Materialism and meaning in life: The role of subjective well-being

Materialism has been found to menace people’s well-being (25, 26). Materialism’s adverse effect on well-being has not only been shown in correlational studies, but also experimental ones. For example, Kasser and colleagues (29) found that decreasing participants’ materialism experiences could improve self-esteem. Experiential avoidance (22), personality factors such as neuroticism and narcissism (30), unrealistic expectations for evaluating the standard of living (31), frustration of basic psychological needs (27), sense of insecurity (32) are the possible explanations for such results. Therefore, our first hypothesis (H1) is:

H1: Materialism negatively associates with subjective well-being.

Income plays an important role in people’s life satisfaction (17). Ward and King (33) found that income was also positively associated with meaning in life especially in people of low positive affect. Positive affect has been shown to be one of the most critical antecedents to meaning in life (3, 34, 35). Positive affect and life satisfaction are main components constituting people’s subjective well-being (15). Therefore, with the shared nature between subjective well-being and meaning in life, we hypothesize that subjective well-being positively predicts meaning in life, which means that people who have a happier life will find their life more meaningful.

H2: Subjective well-being correlates with meaning in life positively.

While a wealth of literature has shown that materialism harms well-being, Kashdan and Breen (22) was one of the few examples which directly examined the negative relationship between materialism and meaning in life. They proposed that experiential avoidance (i.e., the reluctance to contact with personal negative thoughts, emotions, body sensation and so on) could explain such relationship. While materialism threatens subjective well-being, which is conjected to be an antecedent of meaning in life. Therefore, we hypothesize that:

H3: Materialism correlates with meaning in life negatively.

Materialism and meaning in life: The role of basic psychological needs satisfaction

As mentioned above, SDT suggests that people need to satisfy three basic psychological needs, including autonomy, relatedness, and competence, to attain well-being (27). Basic psychological needs satisfaction is one of the critical factors for ensuring a good mental health status. Therefore, based on the solid empirical evidence stated earlier, we believe that the positive relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being could be replicated in this study.

H4: Basic psychological needs satisfaction would positively correlate with subjective well-being.

Basic psychological needs satisfaction is found to be a mediator in the relationship between materialism and well-being within the SDT framework (25, 36). Deci and Ryan (27) found that events that foster people’s external perceived locus of causality (E-PLOC) will undermine intrinsic goal pursuits. Materialists focus on extrinsic goal pursuits that foster people’s E-PLOC (e.g., fame, reputation, and image) (37). Materialistic values crowd out the intrinsic pursuits (e.g., basic psychological needs) that lead to well-being development

H5: Materialism would negatively predict basic psychological needs satisfaction.

Relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life

The direct relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life is rarely examined in the extant literature. We conjecture that basic psychological needs satisfaction will employ advantageous effects on all three components (i.e., purpose in life, life comprehension and existential significance) in meaning in life.

First, basic psychological needs satisfaction facilitates people’s autonomous life activity engagement. For instance, Eakman (38) showed that basic psychological needs satisfaction and joining meaningful daily activities were correlated to each other. Basic psychological needs satisfaction was also found to predict activity engagement, which was facilitated by autonomous motivation (39). With greater autonomous life engagement, broader life experiences may be obtained, which constitute a more psychologically rich life. Psychological richness is closely related to meaning in life (1). Second, recent research studies have suggested that meaning in life could be regarded as the fourth basic psychological needs other than the three widely documented ones (40), demonstrating the similar psychological nature between basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life. More importantly, Martela and colleagues (41) showed that these three basic psychological needs strongly correlated with meaning in life. Therefore, our last hypothesis is:

H6: basic psychological needs satisfaction would positively correlate with meaning in life.

In this paper, we would test the six hypotheses stated above. We would postulate a serial double mediation model and suggest basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being be two potential mediators explaining the relationship between materialism and meaning in life in the SDT framework.

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Aim, Design, and Setting

To test the speculated model mentioned above. We tried to measure participants’ four main variables including materialism, meaning in life, basic psychological needs satisfaction, and subjective well-being via an online survey, which was presented by Google E-form. In the survey, except the items of the four variables of interests, we have also measured participants’ demographic data including their sex, age, educational level, monthly household income, ethnicity and so on. We administered the online survey in two studies with different sample characteristics. Ethics approval was obtained from the IRB and informed consent was sought from the participants before data collection. We abode by strict ethical guidelines and protected participants’ privacy throughout the whole research process.

Participants

190 Chinese participants (18–47 years old, mean = 24.06, SD = 4.48, 70% were females) have filled in an online survey via snowball sampling. Regarding the socio-economic status (SES) characteristics in this sample, 87.89% participants have bachelor’s degree or above; 43.2%, 35.3% and 21.6% of participants came from a family with monthly household income fewer than US$3750, between US$3750 and US$7500, and above US$7500 respectively.

Measures

As mentioned in the Introduction, four main variables were measured in this research study including materialism, basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being and meaning in life.

Materialism

The 15-item Material Values Scale (MVS) was adopted to measure participants’ materialism (20). MVS is one of the most used scales to assess people’s materialistic values (26). Three dimensions of materialism were assessed in the MVS including materialistic happiness, materialistic centrality, and materialistic success. For example, materialistic happiness was measured by sample items such as ‘my life would be better if I owned certain things I do not have’ and ‘I would be happier if I could afford to buy more things’ in 9-point Likert scale (1: strongly disagree; 9: strongly agree). Three subscales were calculated by averaging the scores of five corresponding items, with reversed scores from reversed items. (Cronbach’s α of materialistic success, materialistic centrality, materialistic happiness, and overall materialism was .77, .66, .75, and .85 in this study)

Subjective well-being and meaning in life

Subjective well-being and meaning in life were measured by the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving, CIT (42). CIT is a 54-item scale that assesses people’s overall thriving status by seven dimensions including relationship quality, life engagement, mastery orientation, autonomy, meaning and purpose in life, optimism, and subjective well-being. Subjective well-being was measured by nine items in the CIT that quantifies three basic elements in subjective well-being including life satisfaction, presence of positive affect as well as absence of negative affect (15). The sample items to measure subjective well-being in the CIT are ‘In most ways my life is close to my ideal’, ‘I feel positive most of the time’ and so on. Meaning in life in this study was measured by three corresponding items in the CIT with sample items such as ‘My life has a clear sense of purpose’. Similar to the widely used scale measuring meaning in life, Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) (43), the items assessing meaning in life in the CIT does not concretely define what “meaning” and “purpose” is for the participants, such nature is arguably proper to measure one’s meaning in life (3). Both subjective well-being and meaning in life in this study were measured by 5-point scale (from 1. strongly disagree to 5. strongly agree). Subjective well-being and meaning in life ratings in this study were calculated by averaging the scores from corresponding items. (Subjective well-being: Cronbach’s α = .94 in this study; Meaning in life: Cronbach’s α = .86, in this study)

Basic psychological needs satisfaction

Participants’ level of basic psychological needs satisfaction was measured by the Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction and Frustration Scale, BPNSFS (44). The scale consists of 24 items assessing both the satisfaction and frustration dimensions of three basic psychological needs including autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Sample items are ‘I feel a sense of choice and freedom in the things I undertake’, ‘I feel competent to achieve my goals’ and so on. The basic psychological needs satisfaction rating in this study was calculated by averaging the mean scores from three basic psychological needs, with reversed scores of the reversed items. (Cronbach’s α = .90 in this study)

Descriptive statistics and correlations

The descriptive data of all relevant variables are summarised in Table 1. Correlational analysis was performed towards all four main variables examined in this paper including materialism constructs, basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being and meaning in life. Basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life were positively significantly correlated with each other. As for materialism constructs, materialistic centrality and materialistic success were not correlated with basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, nor meaning in life. Nevertheless, materialistic happiness was negatively correlated with all other three variables. The multicollinearity diagnostic statistics (i.e., VIF) showed that the issue of multicollinearity in the variables was not present in the current data. See Table 1 and Table 2 for more details.

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Table 1

Descriptive data in variables materialism (H refers to happiness; C refers to centrality; S refers to success), basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life.
	N	Min.	Max.	Mean	Std. Dev.
Materialism-H	190	2.00	9.00	5.86	1.31
Materialism-C		1.20	8.40	4.68	1.20
Materialism-S		1.40	9.00	5.35	1.34
Materialism		2.53	8.13	5.30	1.04
Basic psychological needs satisfaction		1.54	4.50	3.25	.53
Subjective well-being		1.00	5.00	3.14	.85
Meaning in life		1.00	5.00	3.02	1.01

Table 2. Correlation coefficients and multicollinearity diagnostics VIF among materialism constructs (H refers to happiness; C refers to centrality; S refers to success), basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001

	VIF	Materialism-H	Basic psychological needs satisfaction	Subjective well-being	Meaning in life
Materialism-H	1.16
Basic psychological needs satisfaction	1.74	-.34***
Subjective well-being	1.73	-.33***	.64***
Meaning in life	-	-.18*	.39***	.41***

	VIF	Materialism-C	Basic psychological needs satisfaction	Subjective well-being	Meaning in life
Materialism-C	1.00
Basic psychological needs satisfaction	1.69	-.06
Subjective well-being	1.68	-.05	.64***
Meaning in life	-	-.07	.39***	.41***

	VIF	Materialism-S	Basic psychological needs satisfaction	Subjective well-being	Meaning in life
Materialism-S	1.00
Basic psychological needs satisfaction	1.68	-.04
Subjective well-being	1.69	-.06	.64***
Meaning in life	-	-.09	.39***	.41***

	VIF	Materialism	Basic psychological needs satisfaction	Subjective well-being	Meaning in life
Materialism	1.04
Basic psychological needs satisfaction	1.70	-.18*
Subjective well-being	1.70	-.18*	.64***
Meaning in life	-	-.14(p=.06)	.39***	.41***

Power analysis

We have performed Monte Carlo power analysis for indirect effects using the online calculator developed by Schoemann and colleagues (45), with default settings (i.e., 1000 replications, 20000 Monte Carlo Draws per replication, random seed 1234, 95% CI). We input the correlations of each path in the serial double mediation models and standard deviations of the four main variables in the model as required. Refer to the following Table 3 for details about the power statistics.

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Table 3. Power analysis of indirect effects in models of different materialism constructs.

	Indirect effects	Power
Materialism-H (MH)	MH→Basic psychological needs satisfaction→Meaning in life	0.69
	MH→Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.48
	MH→Basic psychological needs satisfaction →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.87

Materialism-C (MC)	MC →Basic psychological needs satisfaction→Meaning in life	0.08
	MC →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.04
	MC →Basic psychological needs satisfaction →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.09

Materialism-S (MS)	MS →Basic psychological needs satisfaction→Meaning in life	0.05
	MS →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.07
	MS →Basic psychological needs satisfaction →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.06

Materialism (M)	M→Basic psychological needs satisfaction→Meaning in life	0.45
	M→Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.17
	M→Basic psychological needs satisfaction →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	0.60

Main findings: A serial double mediation model to explain the relationship between materialism and meaning in life

The proposed serial double mediation model (see Figure 1) was tested by the PROCESS macro 3.5.3 embedded in SPSS (46). We selected Model 6 (2 mediators) as the main analysis option in the PROCESS macro to test our model. In this model, different materialism constructs including materialistic happiness, materialistic centrality, materialistic success, and overall materialism was the predictor (X) in each analysis, meaning in life was the outcome variable (Y), basic psychological needs satisfaction (M1) and subjective well-being (M2) were regarded as the first and second factor mediating the relationship. The results were summarized in the following paragraphs and in Table 4.

As we know from the correlational analysis that both materialistic centrality and materialistic success were not correlated with other three variables. As for materialistic happiness, it significantly negatively predicted meaning in life (H3. b = -.14, t(188) = -2.50, p = .02, r²=.03), which showed that people regarding materialistic possessions as the reason for being happy have difficulties to find their meaning in life. Materialistic happiness also predicted one’s level of basic psychological needs satisfaction (H5. b = -.14, t(188) = -4.89, p <.001, r²=.11) as well as subjective well-being negatively (H1. b= -.08, t(187) = -2.16, p =.03), which indicated that people’s basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being were threatened by people’s belief on materialistic happiness. As for basic psychological needs satisfaction, it significantly predicted people’s level of SWB (H4. b = .94, t(187) = 10.06, p<.001) and meaning in life (H6. b=.31, t(186) = 3.06, p=.003) positively, demonstrating that basic psychological needs satisfaction was important for people having good subjective well-being status and clear life meaning and purposes. At last, subjective well-being was positively associated with meaning in life (H2. b = .31, t(186) = 3.06, p=.003), which showed subjective well-being was a significant antecedent of meaning in life. The results supported all the six research hypotheses.

In the proposed serial double mediation model, we have tested three indirect effects. All indirect effects were tested by a bootstrap estimation approach with 5000 samples. The results showed that indirect effect 1 (i.e., materialistic happiness à basic psychological needs satisfaction à meaning in life) was significant (effect = -.06, 5000-sample 95% bootstrapped lower level confidence interval, BootLLCI = -.12; 5000-sample 95% bootstrapped upper level confidence interval, BootULCI = -.004); indirect effect 2 (i.e., materialistic happiness à subjective well-being à meaning in life) was shown to be marginally significant in the proposed double mediation model (effect = -.03, BootLLCI = -.07; BootULCI = .01). Nonetheless, such indirect effect was shown if it was tested separately as an independent mediation model. In this model, subjective well-being was shown to completely mediate the relationship between materialistic happiness and meaning in life (effect = -.10, BootLLCI = -.16; BootULCI = -.05). Most importantly, indirect effect 3 (i.e., the serial double mediation effect, materialistic happinessàbasic psychological needs satisfactionàsubjective well-beingàmeaning in life) was shown to be significant (effect = -.04, BootLLCI =-.08; BootULCI = -.01). As the direct effect from materialistic happiness to meaning in life was insignificant (b = -.01, t(186) =-.24, p=.81), it was suggested that basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being completely mediated the relationship between materialistic happiness and meaning in life. The serial double mediation effect indicated that if people’s happiness is based on how many materialistic possessions they obtain, such belief menaces their basic psychological needs satisfaction, from which their subjective well-being is also threatened; without satisfactory level of subjective well-being, they are harder to find their own meaning in life. See Figure 2.

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Table 4. Statistics regarding the total effect, direct effect (materialistic happiness→meaning in life) and indirect effects

	b	se	t	p	95% Confidence Interval
Total effect (materialistic happiness→meaning in life)	-.14	.06	-2.45	.02	(-.25, -.03)
Direct effect (materialistic happiness→meaning in life)	-.01	.05	-.24	.81	(-.12, .09)
	b		Bootstrapped se		5000-sample bootstrapped 95% CI
Indirect effect (Total)	-.12		.03		(-.18, -.07)
Indirect effect 1 (materialistic happiness→basic psychological needs satisfaction→meaning in life)	-.06		.03		(-.12, -.0044)
Indirect effect 2 (materialistic happiness→subjective well-being→meaning in life)	-.03		.02		(-.07, .01)
Indirect effect 3 (materialistic happiness→ basic psychological needs satisfaction→ subjective well-being→meaning in life)	-.04		.02		(-.08, -.01)

In study 1, there are two main limitations. First, the sample size was too small that made the reliability of the model in Fig. 2 questionable. The small sample size also yielded unreasonably small power in some indirect effects shown in Table 3. Second, two main variables, including meaning in life and subjective well-being, were not measured by the well-recognized scales in the field. Therefore, we have conducted Study 2 to address these two issues and replicate the serial double mediation model shown in Fig. 2.

Participants

In Study 2, a Prolific sample ( www.prolific.co ) of 767 participants (18–80 years old, mean = 36.86, SD = 13.11, 50.7% were females) was recruited. Regarding the socio-economic status, 80.4% participants obtained bachelor’s degree or above; 50.1%, 40.7% and 9.3% of participants came from a family with monthly household income fewer than US$3750, between US$3750 and US$7500, and above US$7500 respectively. Most participants in this sample were Caucasian (73.3%) and African or African American (14.7%). Others were Asian (7%), American Indian or Alaska Native (.1%), Hispanic or Latino (4.4%) and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (.4%). The sample characteristics of Study 2 were distinguishable from that of Study 1.

Measures

We assessed participants’ materialistic happiness (Cronbach’s α = .82) and basic psychological needs satisfaction (Cronbach’s α = .94) using the same scales described in Study 1. Nonetheless, we measured participants’ subjective well-being by the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) in 5-point scale (47). Sample item is ‘In most ways my life is close to my ideal’. We averaged the five items from SWLS to calculate the subjective well-being score (Cronbach’s α = .90 in this study). As for meaning in life, it was measured by the landmark Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) in 7-point scale (43). Sample item is ‘I understand my life’s meaning’. There are two dimensions of meaning in life captured by MLQ including presence of meaning and searching of meaning. In this study, only presence of meaning was examined as we were more interested in participants’ sense of meaning in life at present (Cronbach’s α = .93 in this study).

Descriptive and correlational statistics

The results were consistent with those in Study 1. Materialistic happiness was negatively correlated with basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life. On the other hand, basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life were positively correlated with each other. Refer to Table 5 and Table 6 for more details.

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Table 5

Descriptive data in materialism (H refers to happiness), basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life.
	N	Min.	Max.	Mean	Std. Dev.
Materialism-H	767	1.00	9.00	5.49	1.74
Basic psychological needs satisfaction		1.29	5.00	3.64	.74
Subjective well-being		1.00	5.00	3.07	.85
Meaning in life		1.00	7.00	4.41	1.51

Table 6. Correlation coefficients and multicollinearity diagnostics VIF among materialism construct (H refers to happiness), basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life. *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001

	VIF	Materialism-H	Basic psychological needs satisfaction	Subjective well-being	Meaning in life
Materialism-H	1.32
Basic psychological needs satisfaction	1.77	-.38***
Subjective well-being	1.97	-.48***	.65***
Meaning in life	-	-.28***	.62***	.62***

Power analysis

Same procedures of Monte Carlo power analysis have been performed to calculate the power of indirect effects in Study 2 (45). All three indirect effect yielded 100% observed power. Refer to Table 7.

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Table 7. Power analysis of indirect effects in the model of materialistic happiness (MH)

	Indirect effects	Power
Materialism-H (MH)	MH→Basic psychological needs satisfaction→Meaning in life	1.00
	MH→Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	1.00
	MH→Basic psychological needs satisfaction →Subjective well-being→Meaning in life	1.00

The replicated serial double mediation model

The serial double mediation model has been successfully replicated in Study 2. Materialistic happiness negatively predicted meaning in life (Total effect: b = − .25, t(765) = -8.17, p < .001, r² = .08), negatively predicted basic psychological needs satisfaction (b = − .16, t(765) = -11.41, p < .001, r² = .15) as well as subjective well-being b = − .16, t(764) = -9.76, p < .001). Basic psychological needs satisfaction positively predicted subjective well-being (b = .75, t(764) = 19.72, p < .001) and meaning in life (b = .80, t(763) = 11.06, p < .001). In addition, subjective well-being positively predicted meaning in life (b = .59, t(763) = 10.60, p < .001). As for the indirect effects, all three indirect effects, including materialistic happiness◊basic psychological needs satisfaction◊subjective well-being◊meaning in life (effect = − .07, BootLLCI = − .09; BootULCI = − .05), materialistic happiness◊basic psychological needs satisfaction◊ meaning in life (effect = − .13, BootLLCI = − .16; BootULCI = − .10), and materialistic happiness◊subjective well-being ◊meaning in life (effect = − .09, BootLLCI = − .12; BootULCI = − .07), were significant. Given that the direct effect from materialistic happiness to meaning in life was insignificant (b = .05, t(763) = 1.77, p = .08), we can conclude that the indirect effects demonstrated complete mediation. See Fig. 3 and Table 8 for more details.

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Table 8

Statistics regarding the serial double mediation model in Study 2
	b	se	t	p	95% Confidence Interval
Total effect (materialistic happiness→meaning in life)	− .25	.03	-8.17	< .001	(-.30, − .19)
Direct effect (materialistic happiness→meaning in life)	.05	.03	1.77	.08	(-.01, .10)
	b		Bootstrapped se		5000-sample bootstrapped 95% CI
Indirect effect (Total)	− .29		.03		(-.34, − .24)
Indirect effect 1 (materialistic happiness→basic psychological needs satisfaction→meaning in life)	− .13		.02		(-.16, − .10)
Indirect effect 2 (materialistic happiness→subjective well-being→meaning in life)	− .09		.01		(-.12, − .07)
Indirect effect 3 (materialistic happiness→ basic psychological needs satisfaction→ subjective well-being→meaning in life)	− .07		.01		(-.09, − .05)

In this study, we have demonstrated a serial double mediation model to discern the mechanisms governing the relationship between materialism and meaning in life, within the SDT framework. In the model, basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being are the two factors mediating the relationship. In other words, materialism (i.e., materialistic happiness) hinders the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, which decreases people’s subjective well-being, then menaces their meaning in life.

What is happiness? How do ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ happiness relate to meaning in life?

Previous studies directly examining the effect of materialism on meaning in life are minimal. One of the rare cases was the study conducted by Kashdan and Breen (22), which demonstrated a significant negative relationship between materialism and meaning in life. Nonetheless, the construct of materialism is usually examined as an overall index. We found that only materialistic happiness played a significant role in threatening basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being and meaning in life, whereas the other two subconstructs materialistic success and materialistic centrality were not correlated with basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being nor meaning in life in Study 1.

Data in this paper have successfully replicated the well-established negative correlation between materialism and basic psychological needs satisfaction, as well as the one between materialism and subjective well-being (25, 48). Take materialistic happiness as an example, people define happiness by extrinsic goals (i.e., materialistic possessions) may likely distract them from intrinsic ones (e.g., spirituality, genuine relationships, person growth, etc), hindering the basic psychological needs satisfaction. According to SDT, basic psychological needs satisfaction is a main prerequisite for well-being (27). Therefore, happiness based on materialistic possessions is not favourable for people’s well-being development. Sirgy and colleagues (49) also suggested that materialistic happiness threatened life satisfaction, a component of subjective well-being. Given that positive affect (i.e., a component of subjective well-being) is the pre-requisite of developing meaning in life, the materialistic happiness→subjective well-being→meaning in life relationship is also consistent with the current literature as well (3, 25).

One of the innovative findings from the current study is the negative relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life. Typically, basic psychological needs satisfaction is usually discussed with well-being. We tried to show that basic psychological needs satisfaction might also be crucial for meaning in life, in which subjective well-being seems like to act as a significant reason to explain this relationship. In other words, with the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, people feel happier (i.e., the positive affect in subjective well-being); such happiness brings about people’s meaning in life. We try to understand why basic psychological needs satisfaction positively predicts meaning in life directly. A value or a goal is arranged in a circumplex system, in which four dimensions can be categorized including ‘extrinsic-self transcendence’ (e.g., conformity and popularity), ‘extrinsic-physical self’ (e.g., image and financial success), ‘intrinsic-self transcendence’ (e.g., spirituality, community), and ‘intrinsic-physical self’ (e.g., safety and fitness) (50, 51). Activating values in the same dimension of the circumplex system will produce consistent behaviours and attitudes, which suppress inconsistent behaviours and attitudes (51). We argue that materialistic values are in the ‘extrinsic-physical self’ dimension in the circumplex system whereas basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being, and meaning in life are in the opposite dimension (i.e., intrinsic dimensions which include values such as spirituality, affiliation, hedonism, community, self-acceptance) (50). Basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life are both intrinsic values in nature, fulfilling basic psychological needs satisfaction will facilitate the development of meaning in life. Such conjecture implies that if people want to develop a sense of meaning in life, they should emphasize more on developing intrinsic goals instead of extrinsic ones.

Happiness based on extrinsic goal pursuits, such as materialistic happiness, is not favourable for establishing a sense of meaning in life. On the other hand, happiness resulted from intrinsic psychological needs satisfaction, is favourable in developing meaning in life. The nature of extrinsic happiness (i.e., materialistic happiness) and intrinsic happiness (i.e., subjective well-being) is different. Materialistic possessions make people feel happy as they provide them with great hedonic satisfaction. Nonetheless, such extrinsic happiness usually diminishes very quickly, forcing people to run on a ‘hedonism treadmill’ to maintain their happiness level (52). Concentrating too much on extrinsic goal pursuits will empty one’s internal self (53). According to the empty-self theory, an empty self is characterized by excessive self-sufficiency, individualism, environmental mastery but it is plagued by the loss of the sense of community connections and meaning in life (53). An empty-self is related to the continuous needs for extrinsic satisfactions such as unnecessary consumptions, by which people’s empty-self can be ‘filled’ (53). With an empty-self, people may be oversensitive to external stimuli, such as others’ judgments and expectations, menacing the quality of well-being, which in turn hinders the development meaning in life. On the other hand, happiness based on intrinsic satisfaction (i.e., basic psychological needs satisfaction) is of high quality. With the satisfaction of autonomy, relatedness, and competence, the internal self can be flourished. With a solidly ‘filled’ internal self, people may be less vulnerable towards the turbulence from the external world, so that a stable well-being can be maintained, facilitating the establishment of meaning in life.

Materialistic happiness menaces basic psychological needs satisfaction, subjective well-being and meaning in life, whereas materialistic centrality nor materialistic success do not

One of the interesting findings demonstrated in this paper was that only materialistic happiness was found to be significantly correlated with meaning in life, where materialistic success nor materialistic centrality were not. Sirgy and colleagues (31, 49) proposed a dual model of materialism, in which they showed that only materialistic happiness threatened people’s life satisfaction. Their results were consistent with the findings of this paper. On the other hand, Sirgy and colleagues (49) suggested that materialistic success facilitated people’s life satisfaction via boosting economic motivation. Similar results were not observed in this paper. Gornik-Durose (30) posited that three materialism subconstructs had dissimilar effects on well-being, in which materialistic happiness was the strongest factor to predict well-being negatively; materialistic success and materialistic centrality were not significantly associated with it. Similar results have also been shown by Ahuvia and Wong (54), in which they found that materialistic happiness was strongly related to life dissatisfaction; materialistic success only related to some domains of life dissatisfaction whereas materialistic centrality did not relate to life satisfaction at all.

According to the studies mentioned above, we can conclude that 1) the negative relationship between materialistic happiness and well-being has been consistently established; 2) materialistic centrality seemed not related to well-being; 3) ambiguous results were found regarding the relationship between materialistic success and well-being. Our next question is: why materialistic success and materialistic centrality are not related to people’s well-being nor meaning in life in this study? Materialistic success and centrality boost people’s economic motivation to earn more materialistic possessions. We speculate that the improved economic motivation could facilitate people’s well-being to a certain extent. For example, a person wants to become a high net worth individual. Such goal may also become his life purpose. With a life purpose, this person may find his life more meaningful. Nonetheless, since materialistic values are detrimental to well-being in nature. The potential advantages brought by the economic motivation might be possibly cancelled out by the detrimental effects from materialism, resulting in the statistically insignificant relationships. On the other hand, such economic motivation boost is not facilitated by materialistic happiness (31), resulting in only negative relationship between materialistic happiness and well-being variables. These are only our speculations; the scientific reasons are still largely unknown. More further studies need to be conducted to systematically discern the distinctive effect from materialistic happiness, materialistic success, and materialistic centrality on well-being variables. More importantly, we conjecture that the well-established materialism effect on well-being was mainly resulted from materialistic happiness, but not from other two subconstructs.

Insights from the current research findings

The findings in this study may give us some hints on how to make our lives more meaningful. People become more materialistic and extrinsic under the influence of consumerism in recent decades. Due to the rapid development of social media, people can easily contact a wealth of information that facilitate their sense of materialistic happiness. For example, it is not difficult for us to view photos in which ‘happy’ celebrities show off their luxury lifestyle on social media such as Facebook or Instagram. We should understand what ‘real’ happiness meant to us. ‘Real’ happiness must be achieved intrinsically but not developed solely from extrinsic satisfaction such as pursuing high net worth and luxury lifestyles. While materialistic possession is merely neutral (27), the chronic desire for it is detrimental to our ‘real’ happiness. Therefore, the first insight is, people could concentrate more on satisfying their basic psychological needs, avoid being distracted too much by the extrinsic materialistic world. People could try to pursue goals that are consistent with their intrinsic values and identity, by which basic psychological needs are easier to be satisfied (27). With the basic psychological needs satisfaction, people could develop ‘real’ happiness, which is one of the most important pre-requisites to nurture meaning in life.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

People’s perception on meaning in life may change in the function of age. Research showed that positive affect, a well-established factor predicting meaning in life, resulted in bigger impact on older people (35). Moreover, cultural differences also significantly affect how people perceive the nature of meaning in life. The Asian collectivistic culture has widely shown to be different from the Western individualistic culture in shaping people’s cognition and behaviours (55). For example, people raised in individualistic cultures put much more emphasis on self and individual success, whereas people in collectivistic cultures address more about interpersonal harmony and group success. Therefore, the nature of materialistic and meaning in life may be different in populations from collectivistic and individualistic cultures. Materialistic happiness might be more about individual satisfaction in people of individualistic cultures whereas it might serve a function for image management in people of collectivistic cultures. Therefore, replication studies need to be conducted in more samples with wider range of ages and cultures.

Furthermore, we assumed materialistic happiness is related to extrinsic goal pursuit in this study. Nevertheless, materialistic values can also be positively correlated with life satisfaction if people internalize the concept to make it as an economic motivation, by which people can improve their competencies for better living conditions (31). According to SDT (27), such internalized extrinsic motivation exists. It is therefore interesting to examine how internalized materialism will influence various well-being variables including meaning in life.

Finally, as discussed above, effects from different dimensions of materialism were largely distinctive. This observation has implied that it is significant for researchers to further examine the effects from different subconstructs of materialism independently, instead of investigating the overall materialism index only.

Acknowledgement

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the College of Professional and Continuing Education, an affiliate of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethics approval has been obtained from the IRB of Research Committee at the College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Reference number: RC/ETH/H/0003. Informed consent has been given by the participants before data collection. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations of Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent for publication

No individual person’s data in any form are contained in this manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the OSF repository. Study 1: https://osf.io/ycwh3/ and Study 2: https://osf.io/zwjya. In case if permission is required to access the links, please contact the correspondence author of this paper, Dr. On-Ting Lo (email: [email protected]).

Competing interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest, including financial and non-financial competing interest, in this paper.

Funding

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant (Ref. CC-CHCS-2018-136(I)) from the College of Professional and Continuing Education, an affiliate of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Authors’ contributions

OL developed the research proposal, collected data, analysed, and interpreted the data, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. SC collected data, analysed, and interpreted the data, wrote some parts in the manuscript. VL analysed and interpreted the data, wrote some parts in the manuscript. All authors, wrote, read the approved the final manuscript.

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No competing interests reported.

Materialistic happiness menaces people’s meaning in life: A serial double mediation model reflecting the roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction and subjective well-being

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Figures

Background

A good life: meaningful and happy

Materialism

Self-Determination Theory

A hypothesized serial double mediation model

Materialism and meaning in life: The role of subjective well-being

Materialism and meaning in life: The role of basic psychological needs satisfaction

Relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and meaning in life

Methods Of Study 1

Aim, Design, and Setting

Participants

Measures

Materialism

Subjective well-being and meaning in life

Basic psychological needs satisfaction

Results Of Study 1

Descriptive statistics and correlations

Power analysis

Main findings: A serial double mediation model to explain the relationship between materialism and meaning in life

Methods Of Study 2

Participants

Measures

Results Of Study 2

Descriptive and correlational statistics

Power analysis

The replicated serial double mediation model

Discussion

What is happiness? How do ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ happiness relate to meaning in life?

Insights from the current research findings

Limitations and Future Research Directions

Declarations

Acknowledgement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication

Availability of data and materials

Competing interests

Funding

Authors’ contributions

References

Additional Declarations

Status:

Version 1