Materialism is a way of life characterized by the pursuit of wealth and possessions. Several studies have documented that a materialistic lifestyle is associated with diminished subjective well-being. In spite of this, many people continue to pursue materialistic goals rather than pursue goals that are more beneficial for their well-being. The current paper investigates one mechanism that may c...

A ZOMBIE IS quite simply a physical and functional duplicate of you or me, who differs from us only in that she does not possess consciousness or phenomenological experience. 1 In other words, we know what it is to feel pain, happiness, and anger; a zombie does not: she completely lacks such experience. Many philosophers have recently befriended zombies. That is to say, these philosophers belie...

The role of self-relevant values (as operationalized via materialism) was studied as a moderator of affective forecasting. Materialists predicted high negative affect in response to a material loss (Study 1), but low negative affect in response to an interpersonal setback (Study 2). For both event types, less negativity was predicted with longer durations from event occurrence, regardless of ma...

William James is well known for his rejection of materialism and his lifelong defense of what he referred to as, among other things, the “religious hypothesis.”1 Part of this defense can be understood in terms of James’s frequent identification with the “sick souls” who are highly sensitive to the evils in our world, rather than the “healthy minded” who are more disposed to either ignore or dow...

The authors conducted this study to further validate the revised short form of the Gratitude, Resentment, and Appreciation Test by investigating the relationship between GRAT-measured gratitude and two other constructs: (a) spiritual transcendence and (b) materialism. As predicted, both the GRAT and its subscales correlated positively with a measure of spiritual transcendence and negatively wit...