Materialism and Meaning in Life: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract

This study replicates the degree of association between materialism and meaning in life, and compares Pakistani and American adults, aged between18 to 25 (M = 21.01, SD = 1.83) years. We conveniently sampled 44 men and 72 women (n = 116) from Pakistan, and 24 men and 77 women (n = 101) from America for this study. The Materialism Scale (Belk, 1984) and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (Steger et al., 2006) were completed by the participants on social media during the period from July-September 2019 using purposive sampling. Pearson correlation indicated a significant inverse relationship between envy (subscale of materialism) and meaning in life for Pakistani (r = -.20, p < .05) and American (r = -.21, p < .05) samples. Additionally, a significant inverse relationship was identified in the American sample between presence of meaning (subscale of meaning in life) and overall materialism (r = -.26, p < .05); however, no other associations between materialism and meaning in life (and their subscales) were revealed. Data also revealed no significant overall differences for materialism and meaning in life in Pakistani and American adults, except non-generosity t (215) = 2.22, p < .05), a subscale of materialism, where the Pakistani sample demonstrated higher levels of non-generosity (M = 24.98, SD = 4.52) as compared to their American counterparts (M = 23.65, SD = 4.31). In the light of this data, we discuss changing views about materialism and meaning in life for young adults in collectivistic and individualistic cultures.