The Relationship Between Instrumental And Terminal Materialism,Expectation And Subjective Well-Being

With the rapid development of economy and abundant materials,It has become a common phenomenon that Chinese people are keen on consumption and pursue material wealth.Many studies have found that materialism has negative effects on the ecological environment,social development and personal life.But many studies have also found that materialism has a positive effect on reducing insecurity,reducing anxiety and boosting self-esteem.So,are there different types of materialism that lead to different functions of materialism?Therefore,this paper attempts to distinguish between instrumental and terminal materialism from the perspective of motivation,and investigate the relationship between instrumental and terminal materialism and subjective well-being,as well as the moderating effect of expectations.Studyl made the instrumental-terminal materialism value scale.Taking social adults as subjects,preliminary survey collected 474 valid questionnaires(a total of 500),retest collected 716 valid questionnaire responses received to test(a total of 951),the exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis respectively,the two dimensions of instrumental-terminal materialism scale was formed with 13 questions in total,including 6 questions in the instrumental materialism subscale and 7 questions in the terminal materialism subscale.The various indexes has good reliability and validity of the scale.In addition,terminal materialism has a significant negative correlation with subjective well-being,while instrumental materialism has no significant correlation with subjective well-being.In study2,the experimental method is used to further explore the expectations'role in the relationship between instrumental-terminal materialism and subjective well-being.179 social adult subjects were randomly divided into two groups,one group of participants used reality-based exceptions to describe their expectations of life,and another group of participants used fantasy-based exceptions to describe their expectations of life.The results showed that instrumental materialism has no significant correlation with subjective well-being,while terminal materialism has a significant negative correlation with subjective well-being.The subjects who used reality-based exceptions had higher subjective well-being,while those who used fantasy-based exceptions had lower subjective well-being.At the same time,those with a high tendency of terminal materialism had a lower subjective well-being level.However,the moderating effect between expectations and subjective well-being is not significant in instrumental-terminal materialism.This study found that the instrumental materialism and terminal materialism have significantly different correlation with subjective well-being.The moderating effect of expectations is not significant between subjective well-being and instrumental-terminal materialism.Expectations have significantly main effect on subjective well-being,the subjects who used reality-based exceptions had higher subjective well-being,which provides empirical reference for guiding people to form wealth concept correctly and use appropriate expectations to increase happiness.