What is contentment? You may picture an emerald meadow with a trickling brook that fills you with a sense of calm. Well, maybe you would be content in such a place — if you could actually spend your life there, but in real life, contentment has more to do with attitude than place.

Contentment comes from being satisfied and thankful for who you are and where you find yourself in life. How often do we find ourselves so involved in the day-to-day activities of working and raising our families that we forget to pause and give thanks for the lives we have and the people we love? When I was a child I never fully understood the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality. My parents always taught us to be grateful for what we had. It was a part our faith as Muslims; gratefulness touched every aspect of our lives.

My parents worked hard and prospered, but they lived a prudent lifestyle. They were openly thankful for everything they had, nurturing in their children the attributes of appreciation and generosity.

They first determined if participants had either a happiness materialistic or success materialistic mindset, and then asked questions regarding current satisfaction of life, expected satisfaction of life in the future and economic motivations. Happiness materialism wealth and material consumption is the sign of a happy life can negatively influence life satisfaction in two different ways:.

Success materialism wealth and material possessions are a sign of success in life positively influences life satisfaction by boosting a person's economic motivation. This can lead to a rise in their future satisfaction with their standard of living, which positively influences overall life satisfaction.

We want to make money and we want to have a better life, but what actually gives us satisfaction with life? Is it wealth and material possessions, or is it what those things are a sign of? The researchers cross-checked their results with survey answers from other parts of the world, including the United States, to verify the universality of the findings.

These include family, friends, your health, continual learning and new experiences," she said. Materials provided by Binghamton University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Participants were seated approximately 60 cm behind the computer screen. The materials included priming sentences and category words.

Ten priming sentences were taken from the two-dimensions of the Material Value Scale: happiness centrality and success centrality e. These sentences had been adapted to make all items appropriately equal or similar in length and in affirmativeness of the statement. Participants were asked to respond by pressing either the up or down arrow button as quickly and accurately as possible, pressing the up arrow when the arrow on the screen pointed up and the down arrow when the arrow pointed down.

Before each pair of category words and arrow was presented, a fixed cross 0. In the pilot study, 16 students judged the consistency between each priming sentence and its original item in the MVS in a matching task.

They were asked to draw a line between one of the 10 edited priming sentences for example, own expensive homes, cars, and clothes. We then revised the priming sentence according to the results to make sure the shortened sentence used for priming retained the same meaning as its original item in the MVS.

Participants responded to six items during practice and 10 items in the formal experiment; each item was repeated 10 times. Priming sentences were presented by the computer one by one. The trials had no time limit; the sentence would not disappear from the screen until participants understood the meaning of the sentence and then pressed the space bar see Figure 1.

After refreshing, the screen showed a fixed cross ms , followed by category words ms , another fixed cross ms , and an arrow, with the screen refreshing in-between. Each of the two category words happiness and success appeared on either the left or right side of the screen randomly; the arrow was placed in the position of any of the category words with equal probability and random order.

The direction of the arrow was also random. Participants had to judge the direction of the arrow as quickly and accurately as possible. The entire experiment took around 15 min to complete. Time sequence of implicit experiment on a given trial.

The display depicts the time sequence of a test session trial, which consisted of priming sentence, cross-fixed, two category words, cross-fixed and target probe.

The actual stimuli were white against a black background. Both variables were within subject factors. In other words, no attention bias occurred. This result indicates that participants equally related the success factor items of the MVS to the concepts of success and happiness. This result indicated that participants related the happiness items in the MVS more closely to the concept of happiness than to the concept of success.

These findings demonstrate that the Chinese views of happiness and success do relate to each other, confirming the result in Study 1 with implicit empirical evidence for convergence of material happiness and success.

Moreover, this study shows that the relationship is not a simple overlaying between material happiness and success, but a comprising relationship. As the results show, material success is associated with the success and happiness concepts; that is, success is seen as indicating happiness, but happiness might not indicate success.

The present research revealed that the MVS has a two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional structure in Chinese samples.

These findings were confirmed by two studies using both self-report questionnaire and controlled experiment. In societies that attach importance to social evaluation criteria, success, and happiness tend to be integrated into one-dimension, so that the three-dimensions of materialistic value are reduced to 2.

This item scale showed acceptable levels of reliability and validity, and good fitness of CFA. We verified the finding by using both explicit and implicit methods. Our finding reveals that Chinese materialism has unique characteristics, and may help shape the theory of material value into a more nuanced, culturally sensitive one. In the present study, the dimensionality and structure of the MVS were verified in China.

We found no conflict with the previous material value theory developed by Richins and Dawson Moreover, we revealed new information that helps enrich the theory under the condition of social evaluation system.

It is clear from our findings that cultural differences have an impact on the structure of materialism. Moreover, the two-dimensional item version has some advantages in application. First, the structure is clearer.

It can explain the impact of culture on materialistic values. Secondly, it can save time and the capacity of the questionnaire. We call for more research to verfiy these advantages by comparing the two versions original and short in the future. Our observations showed that material possession centrality remains an independent factor under social evaluation, whereas the happiness and success dimensions may converge together.

This suggests that the attribution of possession is culturally independent, while attributions of happiness and success are shaped by culture. In Study 1, happiness and success items appeared in the same dimension. The convergence of the material happiness and success factors lies in cultural influence. Easterners emphasize social role and public perspective when managing the self and hold interdependent self-concepts, which is directly related to the core feature of materialism: public consumption and possession Marcus and Kitayama, , ; Richins, This might be the cultural root through which people relate material success with material happiness.

Success can bring people high social status, good reputation, and great wealth Ting-Toomey, , Good social status is a reasonable result of success and an acceptable demonstration of happiness.

Furthermore, Easterners hold a holistic thinking style, which leads to a halo effect when we evaluate others by means of overall impression. Therefore, people tend to believe that possession success means happiness. Generally speaking, when measuring a concept using a scale, researchers have often used explicit Likert scales, which may be influenced by desirability and other biasing factors.

This limits our understanding of the underlying logical relationships. In the present research, we used both explicit and implicit experimental paradigms, which allowed us to double-check the overlapping relationship of factors in the MVS.

This study explores the characteristics of material values of Chinese consumers from the perspective of culture. Several limitations are worthy of attention. The current study did not include samples from other countries, and there is also no comparison of cultural differences directly with other countries, the material values that explain multiculturalism need to be further validated. As the data are collected by the same method, common method variance should be considered.

Due to the existence of social desirability, self-reported materialist values affected by social and culture cognition. Third, the cultural impact is very complicated. Future research can further explore the impact of culture on materialistic values by means of experimental approaches. The results of the present studies have some implications for marketing.

For example, China is shifting from a planned economy to a market economy. It is necessary to educate Chinese consumers on how to avoid economic, physical, and psychological damage and irrational behaviors caused by the market trap Jin et al. Similarly, a developing market in a country with a specific culture should also consider local cultural and behavioral characteristics and adapt localized marketing strategies Sun et al.

Specifically, since Chinese people closely relate happiness and success, emphasizing face Liao and Wang, and addressing how products can bring both happiness and success could result in better outcomes.

JL: conceived the research idea; made the research design; performed the studies; analyzed the data; interpreted the results; prepared manuscript; LW: conceived the research idea; organized the research; provided test materials and equipment.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The authors are grateful to the reviewers for constructive suggestions. Argyle, M. Forgas and J. Innes Amsterdam: Elsevier , — Google Scholar. Barger, S. Life Res. Bauer, W.

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