Materialism is the degree to which people buy items to attempt to elevate their status to their peer groups and the outside world. It is the idea that these elaborate purchases make a person happier than they would otherwise be. This kind of lifestyle is reflected in the modern culture of borrowing money, with millions of pounds owed to banks and credit card companies so people can quench their thirst for immediate gratification and have quality and often unnecessary items straight away. This study aims to identify if there is a difference in how materialistic people are depending on their gender, and if they are spiritual. It is a common stereotype that females spend longer, and enjoy shopping more than males. It is also a widely held belief that females have more clothes and spend longer getting ready for a night out than males. If this is true then it would suggest females will be more concerned than males about others’ opinions of them. So this article will examine the difference between attitudes in materialism and will carry out a short study to test for a difference in attitude towards materialism between the two genders, with the above in mind the first hypothesis is that females will be significantly more materialistic than males. The second question is whether attitudes towards materialism differ depending on how spiritual people are. A common perception would be that people more in tune with their spiritual side are more contented than other people and gain happiness from this. Therefore they may not feel the need to surround themselves with items to make them happy as somebody not so in tune with themselves may do. Hypothesis two asserts that spiritual people will be less materialistic than non spiritual people. This study requires participants to complete a questionnaire based around questions investigating materialistic attitudes. Factor analysis will then be conducted on the answers to identify groups of questions that are linked, and then gender and spiritualism will be compared within these factors after the data has been converted to Z scores.

A Study…

The aim of this study was to discover whether attitudes towards materialism differ between males and females, and spiritual and non spiritual people. The participants consisted of 141 females and 115 males. 73 of the participants were spiritual and 183 listed themselves as non spiritual. The participants completed a questionnaire consisting of 18 questions associated with materialism, then further questions about their experiences and attitudes on feelings towards Christmas and their current situation. Factor analysis of the responses to the 18 materialism questions indicated three factors effecting the results.

Factor 1 consists of seven items, this factor is named the importance of other people’s perceptions (IP). This group of items indicates the importance placed on buying things to influence how somebody is viewed by others, and how much they judge others on how they appear. Factor 2 is made up of seven items and is named personal gratification (PG). This group of items measure the degree to which people buy things to satisfy themselves regardless of what others think. Factor three consists of five items and is named current satisfaction (CS). This group of items measures how happy people are with their current situation in terms of what they own.

Conclusion

This study showed that males place more emphasis on buying items because they need or want them, regardless of whether others will be impressed than females do. Therefore they buy for personal gratification whereas females want items to impress others. This suggests that other people’s opinions may be more important to females than males, meaning they are more materialistic and that hypothesis one is accepted. The effect size was small at 7.4% suggesting the difference between males and females is not that big. Perhaps some females are forced to only buy what they need but are less happy about it than males. Possibly due to how it looks to other people, and they wish to live with more luxuries than they do. The study also found that spiritual people are less concerned than non spiritual people about how others perceive them and they are less interested in how others appear to them, therefore they are less materialistic and hypothesis two is accepted. The effect size was again small at 5.7% suggesting only a small difference between spiritual and non spiritual people in the importance they place on how others perceive them, and how they perceive other people.

Additionally it was found that spiritual people are less happy with their current situation than non spiritual people. This is contrary to the rationale stating that they would be more content and happier with life. A possible explanation may be that because it has been shown spiritual people do not have as materialistic perceptions as non spiritual people they lack the luxury items that more materialistic people would buy. Therefore even if somebody who is spiritual was content with what they have, the joy that somebody who likes material things gets from buying something new makes them more satisfied than a spiritual person making do with what they have. The effect size was 2.1% meaning the difference between how currently satisfied spiritual and non spiritual people are is small. This supports the idea that the two different techniques for gaining happiness works for each group, with non spiritual people slightly more satisfied.

The effects that were not significant nor were they close to being significant. As the groups were so similar in the six non significant comparisons it is perhaps not surprising that the three areas they did significantly differ the effect sizes were so small. Further evidence that support the fact that there is little difference between the groups comes from the standard deviations that are comparatively large compared to the mean, suggesting the scores are fairly scattered with neither group clustering their responses to the items in one place.

Though there were slight differences then the lack of significant results force us to accept the conclusion that attitudes towards materialism do not differ between males and females or spiritual and non spiritual people. In other words your average lager lout with no views or principles is just as likely to be materialist as is his church going better half.

Mack LeMouse

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