Interpersonal influences on adolescent materialism: A new look at the role of parents and peers

What causes adolescents to be materialistic? Prior research shows parents and peers are an important influence. Researchers have viewed parents and peers as socialization agents that transmit consumption attitudes, goals, and motives to adolescents. We take a different approach, viewing parents and peers as important sources of emotional support and psychological well-being, which increase self-esteem in adolescents. Supportive parents and peers boost adolescents' self-esteem, which decreases their need to turn to material goods to develop positive selfperceptions. In a study with 12–18 year-olds, we find support for our view that self-esteem mediates the relationship between parent/peer influence and adolescent materialism. © 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Rising levels of materialism among adolescents have raised concerns among parents, educators, and consumer advocates.More than half of 9–14 year-olds agree that, “when you grow up, the more money you have, the happier you are,” and over 60% agree that, “the only kind of job I want when I grow up is one that getsme a lot of money” (Goldberg, Gorn, Peracchio, & Bamossy, 2003). These trends have lead social scientists to conclude that adolescents today are “...the most brand-oriented, consumer-involved, and materialistic generation in history” (Schor, 2004, p. 13). What causes adolescents to bematerialistic? Themost consistent finding to date is that adolescent materialism is related to the interpersonal influences in their lives—notably, parents and peers. The vast majority of research is based on a social influence perspective, viewing parents and peers as socialization agents that transmit consumption attitudes, goals, and motives to adolescents through modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction. In early research, Churchill and Moschis (1979) proposed that adolescents learn rational aspects of consumption from their parents and social aspects of consumption (materialism) from their peers. Moore and ⁎ Corresponding author. Villanova School of Business, 800 Lancaster Avenue, Villanova, PA 19085, USA. Fax: +1 520 621 7483. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L.N. Chaplin), [email protected] (D.R. John). 1057-7408/$ see front matter © 2010 Society for Consumer Psychology. Publish doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2010.02.002 Moschis (1981) examined family communication styles, suggesting that certain styles (socio-oriented) promote conformity to others' views, setting the stage for materialism. In later work, Goldberg et al. (2003) posited that parents transmit materialistic values to their offspring by modeling these values. Researchers have also reported positive correlations betweenmaterialism and socio-oriented family communication (Moore & Moschis, 1981), parents' materialism (Flouri, 2004; Goldberg et al., 2003), peer communication about consumption (Churchill & Moschis, 1979; Moschis & Churchill, 1978), and susceptibility to peer influence (Achenreiner, 1997; Banerjee & Dittmar, 2008; Roberts, Manolis, & Tanner, 2008). We take a different approach. Instead of viewing parents and peers as socialization agents that transmit consumption attitudes and values, we consider parents and peers as important sources of emotional support and psychological well-being, which lay the foundation for self-esteem in adolescents. We argue that supportive parents and peers boost adolescents' self-esteem, which decreases their need to embrace material goods as a way to develop positive self-perceptions. Prior research is suggestive of our perspective. In studies with young adults, researchers have found a link between (1) lower parental support (cold and controlling mothers) and a focus on financial success aspirations (Kasser, Ryan, Zax, & Sameroff, 1995: 18 year-olds) and (2) lower parental support (less affection and supervision) in ed by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1 Support refers to warmth, affection, nurturance, and acceptance (Becker, 1981; Ellis, Thomas, and Rollins, 1976). Parental nurturance involves the development of caring relationships, in which parents reason with their children about moral conflicts, involve them in family decision making, and set high moral expectations (Maccoby, 1984; Staub, 1988). 177 L.N. Chaplin, D.R. John / Journal of Consumer Psychology 20 (2010) 176–184 divorced families and materialism (Rindfleisch, Burroughs, & Denton, 1997: 20–32 year-olds). These studies do not focus on adolescents, do not examine peer factors, nor do they include measures of self-esteem or self-worth. But, they do suggest that parents and peers can influence materialism in ways other than transmitting consumption attitudes and values, which has been the focus of prior research on adolescent materialism. In this article, we seek preliminary evidence for our view by testing whether self-esteem mediates the relationship between parent/peer influence and adolescent materialism. We include parent and peer factors that inhibit or encourage adolescent materialism, which allows us to test self-esteem as a mediator under both conditions. For parental influence, we include parental support (inhibits materialism) and parents' materialism (encourages materialism). Both factors have appeared in prior materialism studies, but our interest here is whether self-esteem is a mediator of their influence on materialism. For peer influence, we include peer support (inhibits materialism) and peers' materialism (encourages materialism), with our interest being whether self-esteem is a mediator of their influence on materialism. These peer factors are new to materialism research and offer potentially new insights. Contrary to prior materialism research, which views peers as encouraging materialism among adolescents, we also consider the possibility that peers may be a positive influence by providing emotional support in the same way that parents do. Our research offers several contributions to understanding materialism in adolescents. First, we provide a broader perspective on the role of parents and peers as influences on adolescent materialism. The social influence perspective, which views parents and peers as transmitting consumption attitudes and values, has dominated materialism research with children and adolescents since its early days. We provide a broader perspective by considering parents and peers as much more than socialization agents—they contribute heavily to the sense of self-esteem that adolescents possess, which influences materialism. Second, our perspective provides a process explanation for why parents and peers influence materialism that can be empirically tested. Prior research offers a valuable set of findings about what factors correlate with adolescent materialism, but the process responsible for the correlation is left untested. Finally, we provide a parsimonious explanation for why different factors related to parent and peer influence affect adolescent materialism. Although the number of potential parent and peer factors is large, it is possible that there is a common thread (self-esteem) for why these factors influence adolescent materialism. Isolating mediators, such as selfesteem, could provide the basis for developing a conceptual framework to tie together findings across prior studies with different factors, providing a more unified explanation for why certain adolescents are more vulnerable to materialism.