Have you ever gone to a store intending to pick up a few things, but by the time you check out your cart is full? You leave wondering what happened between walking in and checking out. Was it that fantastic deal you couldn't pass up or the tantalizing new item that you just couldn't live without?
Losing control is an alarming effect of materialism. It can cause materialistic people to be slave to their lifestyle. It can cause them to lose everything they had before and be reduced to a worse state than they were before their spending sprees. “Individuals scoring high on materialism scales have higher hopes and expectations of material possessions and, perhaps, due to unrealistic aspirations, it may be harder for them to feel satisfied with their possessions compared to non-materialistic individuals” (Lee and Ahn 20). “Therefore, even with increased consumption, one may feel unhappy because one’s aspirations are heightened as well” (Lee and Ahn 22). The authors of that article say that since materialistic people have higher aspirations and expectations, it makes it harder to be happy with what they have than those who expect far less. “Materialism [is] wrong because it places things above people. It shows that your priorities are on transient items that can be bought and sold and not on people and relationships. Money and therefore things cannot buy happiness. If you are happy before you have money, you are going to be happy after you have money. If you are miserable broke, than you are going to be miserable rich. Money doesn’t change that” (Lee and Ahn 40). They buy and buy and buy and don't know why. They don't know why they continue to buy, but they do.
In the next article I will discuss the final and most common effect of materialism. Following that, I will have articles on how to break the control of materialism.
Works Cited
Lee, Michael S. W., and Christie Seo Youn Ahn. “Anti-Consumption, Materialism, and Consumer Well-Being.” J Consum Aff Journal of Consumer Affairs, vol. 50, no. 1, Mar. 2016, pp. 18–47. Academic Search Complete [EBSCO], doi:10.1111/joca.12089.
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