Healthy, wealthy, wise, and social: Defining and testing a comprehensive model of resources

Abstract

Research cutting across a wide swath of the psychological and behavioral sciences has, following an abundance of evidence, reached the unassailable conclusion that resources are good. While we do not dispute this, we do additionally argue that the value of resources may not be inherently uniform. That is, the value of a resource may depend in part on the nature of the resource as well as the nature of the person accumulating and expending that resource. To that end, we explicate six distinct types of resources (cognitive capital, material capital, social relational capital, social transactional capital, somatic direct capital, and somatic indirect capital) and test across two studies the hypothesized moderative effects of sex and resource type on determinations of resource value, including as related to mate value and perceived stress. Results support the hypothesis that resource value is moderated by sex and resource type, and that the previously established relationships between resource accumulation, mate value, and stress are similarly moderated. Additionally, we find that being “overly wealthy” in some forms of capital may actually prove to be less than valuable. We interpret these results as confirming the hypothesis that resources are not monolithic nor are they uniformly valuable.