Materialism as a barrier to sustainable wellbeing

Sustainable prosperity must encompass human flourishing within the ecological limits of a finite planet. But to what extent can sustainable wellbeing be achieved alongside personal values focused on money, image and consumer goods? Summarising her recent journal article with Birgitta Gatersleben and Tim Jackson, Amy Isham considers how the materialistic values promoted within consumer cultures may prevent us from successfully transitioning towards more rewarding, sustainable lifestyles, by hampering flow experiences.

One of the research themes that we are exploring at CUSP is the idea that it is possible to have ‘more fun with less stuff’. That is, that we can live better by consuming less. My particular focus has been on the possibility for flow experiences to provide this more sustainable form of wellbeing. Our previous research demonstrated that people who are able to have both more intense and more frequent experiences of flow also tend to have greater wellbeing. On top of this, flow appeared to be more likely to occur in activities with a lower environmental impact. We concluded that flow offered great potential for achieving sustainable wellbeing. But this fact alone is not useful unless we can understand how to achieve frequent flow experiences across society. Therefore, in our latest paper, Birgitta Gatersleben, Tim Jackson, and I sought to examine whether the materialistic values promoted within consumer cultures can influence our ability to experience flow.

Firstly, a quick introduction to what flow actually is. Flow describes a state of optimal experience whereby an individual is fully engaged in an activity. Engagement, in positive psychology, is considered to be one of the five core elements that deliver personal wellbeing. During flow an individual devotes all of their attention to the task at hand, to the extent that they can be said to ‘lose themselves’ in the activity. Their actions feel automatic and effortless because they are not aware of any conscious effort to initiate them and they temporarily lose self-consciousness so can act without fear of judgement or failure. This total concentration on the activity during flow also means that any awareness of the worries and concerns from everyday life is eliminated, and individuals often lose track of time. Flow experiences are said to be most likely to occur when there is a perceived balance between the skills that a challenge requires and those that an individual possesses.

How does materialism come into this?

When we say that someone holds strong materialistic values we mean that they place a large emphasis on the acquisition of money and consumer goods, believing that their ownership will lead to happiness and greater social status. Materialistic values can be promoted by various factors, including greater exposure to consumer advertising and growing up with parents who are highly materialistic. It’s fair to say that we expected to find that those individuals holding the strongest materialistic values may be less inclined to experience flow—highly materialistic individuals tend to be pre-occupied with material rewards and public image, this could prevent them from choosing to fully engage with an activity simply because it is enjoyable. What’s more, materialistic values have been associated with greater time spent on more passive, low skill leisure activities such as watching television which present fewer opportunities for meaningful engagement and are thus less supportive of flow.

Our research is putting the thesis to test, examining the relationship between materialistic values and flow experiences across three separate studies. We start in Study 1 by measuring the strength of people’s materialistic values and asking them how often they experience the characteristics of flow in their daily lives in an online survey. Findings document that those people who report the strongest materialistic values also tend to be the ones experiencing the characteristics of flow less frequently. Next, we use experimental methods to test whether materialistic values can have a causal effect on flow experiences. In both a sample of students (Study 2) and British adults (Study 3) we find that temporarily increasing the strength of materialistic values leads people to report poorer quality flow experiences in a subsequent activity, in comparison to when materialistic values have not been heightened. Put simply, our study confirms that holding strong materialistic makes it less likely that individuals will experience flow.

Flow may be beneficial then, but a focus on consumer goods seems to prevent us from fully experiencing flow and all the benefits that come with it. Consumer societies may altogether not be supportive of flow experiences. It still holds true that good lives do not have to ‘cost the earth’; that it may indeed be possible to have ‘more fun with less stuff’. But equally, it appears that sustainable wellbeing is unlikely to be achieved on a larger scale, at least through flow experiences, without a transformation of the values and beliefs promoted within consumer cultures.

We are now turning our attention towards trying to understand exactly why materialistic values may have their flow-undermining effects, so that we can begin to design interventions to make flow accessible to all. Indeed, CUSP’s vision for sustainable prosperity is “one in which people everywhere have the capability to flourish as human beings—within the ecological and resource constraints of a finite planet.” We must tackle the problematic aspects of materialism to ensure that this is achieved.