Explaining the link between materialism and life satisfaction: A life course study in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The relationship between materialism and life satisfaction has been widely researched, but the direction of the presumed causality is a subject of debate. Most previous studies suggest that materialism makes people unhappy, other research suggests that unhappiness may promote materialism, while some researchers suggest that they emerged relationship may be the result of third variables. Such speculations remain largely unanswered in part because previous studies have ignored the mechanisms that explain the development of these orientations. The present study uses the life course approach to explain the mechanisms that may lead to the observed relationship between materialism and life satisfaction in Turkey. Despite its cross-sectional nature, the study findings suggest that the emerged relationships between the two variables reported in previous studies may develop relatively independent of each other; and they may explain the inconsistent findings about the nature of the relationship between the two variables. The findings raise the issue of whether the two variables are causally related or whether they are causally related as strongly as it was originally thought.

关于物质主义和生活满意度的关系已经有广泛的研究，但是假设两者有因果关系的导向仍然是个有争论的话题。之前的大部分研究表明，物质主义会降低人的幸福感，其他研究表明，不幸福可能会导致物质主义。然而一些研究人员称，研究呈现的关系可能受到了第三因素的影响。这些推测多数未得到证实，其中一方面原因是之前的研究都忽视了解释这些方向发展的机制。目前的这项研究采用了生命历程法来解释引起土耳其物质主义和生活满意度关系的机制。尽管该研究有交叉属性，研究结果仍表明之前研究中指出的以上两个变量间的关系也许是相互独立发展的，这也许解释了关于这两个变量之间关系研究结果不一致的原因。该研究提出了两个问题，即物质主义和生活满意度这两个变量是否有因果关系，是否像人们原本认为的有紧密的因果关系。

KEYWORDS:

• Life course
• materialism
• life satisfaction
• family disruptions
• stress

关键词:

• 生命历程
• 物质主义
• 生活满意度
• 家庭破裂
• 压力

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Professor George P. Moschis for his assistance and support in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.