American psychologist Tim Kasser unleashed an evidence-based attack on Western materialism in December. Speaking at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce in London, Kasser echoed the words of Martin Luther King, calling for a revolution of values, a shift from a thing-centred to a person-centred society.
Our slide into materialism has reached new lows, Kasser said, especially in America. Advertising is everywhere, even on Florida children’s report card envelopes, promising free McDonald’s Happy Meals for good grades. Fifty-two out of 100 of the world’s largest economic organisations are corporations, not nations. How did President Bush seek to inspire his nation after 9/11? He said ‘We can’t let the terrorists succeed in their objective of frightening us to the point where we don’t conduct business or people don’t shop.’
But according to Kasser, Associate Professor of Psychology at Knox College, numerous studies show this focus on material wealth carries psychological, social and ecological costs. Materialistic people, from children to pensioners, are less satisfied with life, lack vitality, and suffer more anxiety, depression and addiction problems. Materialistic values make people more anti-social, less empathic, more competitive and less cooperative. Indeed, in 2006, psychologist Kathleen Vohs showed that the mere thought of money made people behave more selfishly. Materialistic people also have larger ecological footprints and tend to care less about the environment.
So what’s the answer? Kasser said studies of over 1800 students across 15 nations have led to the ‘circumplex model’ of human values, showing that people who endorse so-called extrinsic values like popularity and financial success, tend not to prioritise intrinsic values like personal growth and community feeling, and vice versa (see tinyurl.com/3ypnfa). ‘So the solution is actually quite simple,’ Kasser said, ‘the antidote to materialism can be found in intrinsic values.’
According to Kasser, we should champion the idea of ‘voluntary simplicity’ - down-shifting, finding inner richness while choosing to work, earn and consume less. One study of 200 people who’d chosen voluntary simplicity showed they were happier and more ecologically responsible than 200 typical Americans, even though they earned an average of 60 per cent less. Statistical analysis revealed their greater happiness was entirely explained by their endorsement of intrinsic values.
Another approach is to alert people to the rewards of time affluence. A study in press with the Journal of Business Ethics found that 145 people with more time on their hands showed greater subjective well-being thanks largely to the opportunity to engage in intrinsic pursuits. ‘Yet when I ask people in America how they are,’ Kasser said, ‘the number one answer is "I’m busy".’
In fact, the citizens of the world’s ultimate materialist nation now work 160 hours a year more on average than they did 30 years ago. They average about nine weeks a year more than Europeans, which equates to an extra year of work every six years. There’s no mandatory maternity cover in America, no holiday or overtime laws. All this leaves Americans time poor, with little room for personal interests, family or the community.
While the GDP (how much money is turned over) of America, the UK and other developed nations has soared over the last 50 years, genuine progress in terms of happiness and well-being has flatlined. But still we continue to measure the progress of nations using GDP. ‘We need a revolution of values,’ Kasser concluded. ‘Our current approach is leading to unhappiness, destroying social connections and harming the environment.’
Q&A with Tim Kasser
Q. Has happiness flatlined while GDP has risen because our greater comfort and luxury allows us more time and energy to worry?
A. It seems unlikely - time affluence does not seem to have increased in the USA or UK alongside GDP. My sense is that happiness has flatlined due to three interlocking phenomena. Firstly, happiness is partially determined by our relative standing to our peers, so happiness will not rise much if everyone’s income is increasing. Secondly, once a nation has reached a certain level of economic development, the determinants of happiness shift from things money can buy (i.e. shelter, clean water) to things money can’t buy (i.e. good relationships, self-esteem); increases in GDP won’t increase happiness, because GDP is irrelevant to those determinants of happiness. Finally, it seems that increases in GDP are also associated with increases in some social ills (like inequality, divorce rates, consumerism, ecological problems) that work against the happiness that GDP increases could perhaps bring.
Q. Is there a problem with measuring subjective happiness in that each individual will interpret the meaning of happiness in their own way, and will be influenced by the context they live in?
A. Materialism has been associated not only with low ‘happiness’ but also with a host of other personal well-being indicators (including depression, anxiety, physical symptoms, positive and negative affect, narcissism, etc.). Also, we have always striven to use the most psychometrically sound methods of measuring happiness that are available. So while I agree that people might interpret happiness in different ways and are influenced by the context in which they live, I understand this as error variance that would, if anything, make it more difficult to find the underlying negative correlation between materialism and well-being that keeps turning up in study after study.
Q. What about the concept of the hedonic treadmill, our tendency to habituate to new levels of pleasure and comfort? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with material aspirations per se, it is just that our expectations for happiness have risen, and will always to continue to do so?
A. If you are correct, then that is even further evidence that capitalistic, consumer society is aimed in the wrong direction, for it will not be able to fulfil our needs and will destroy a good deal of the environment in a vain attempt to do so, making it more difficult for future generations and other species to have a good life.
Q. You said we should learn to work and consume less, but there’s a body of literature that shows how beneficial work can be for people’s self-esteem, sense of purpose and their social lives.
A. I did not argue that people should not engage in creative work; I said that the evidence suggests that if they worked less than now, then they would have more opportunity to engage in intrinsically oriented activities that increase well-being and in ecologically responsible behaviours that help sustain the environment.
Q. Related to that, there’s evidence showing that people of lower socio-economic status (SES) suffer from more anxiety and depression - how does that tally with your research showing that people with materialistic values suffer from more mental illness? Perhaps the problem is not with materialism itself, rather with being materialistic but failing to find financial and employment success?
A. It is easy to think that wealthier people are more materialistic because they have more resources with which to enact this value, but actually people from lower SES strata tend to be more materialistic. In terms of this being an explanation for why materialism fails to satisfy, I’d say two things. First, the research is quite mixed: most studies say that SES doesn’t matter, one says that materialism is worse for poorer people, and one piece of data I’ve seen suggests materialism is worse for the well-being of wealthier people. Second, even if you are correct that the problem is that low well-being is caused by poor materialistic people ‘failing to find financial and employment success’, then we must ask the question why we have a cultural and economic system that reserves ‘success’ for the few and is making it increasingly unlikely that poorer people will be able to attain that success.
Q. Isn’t it people’s hunger for more that underlies drive and ambition, values which ultimately lead to technological and social breakthroughs?
A. I’m unwilling to accept that ‘the hunger for more’ is driven solely by self-interested desires unleashed in a competitive marketplace; certainly people came up with all kinds of interesting technological and social breakthroughs long before capitalism became institutionalised in the way it is, and certainly they have done so in other cultures that did not organise economic life in this way. The idea that ‘without this system there would be no creative breakthroughs’ is, to me, a good example of how neo-liberal capitalistic ideology can become internalised and lead us to believe that we must have this system or no other. Further, I’d note that to conclude that the human creative tendency is only spurred by the desire for money is certainly at odds with the large amount of data showing how external rewards tend to undermine intrinsic motivation and creativity.
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