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Materialistic Values Among Chinese Adolescents: Effects of Parental Rejection and Self-esteem

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Abstract

Background

Materialistic values among today’s adolescents have been a concern around the world, yet few studies concerning Chinese adolescents’ materialistic values have been conducted. Additionally, the joint effects of parental rejection and self-esteem on materialistic values remain unclear.

Objective

We examined materialistic values in a sample of adolescents in mainland China, and tested whether parental rejection was positively correlated with adolescents’ materialistic values and whether the process was moderated by self-esteem.

Methods

We recruited 593 adolescents from 7th to 12th grade (299 boys; age: M = 16.41, SD = 1.84) and asked them to complete a questionnaire containing parental rejection (parental rejection subscale from s-EMBU; Arrindell et al. in Personal Individ Differ, 27(4):613–628, 1999), self-esteem (Self-Esteem Scale; Rosenberg in Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1965), materialistic values (Youth Materialism Scale; Goldberg et al. in J Consum Psychol 13(3):278–288, 2003), and demographic information.

Results

Chinese adolescents did not strongly endorse materialistic values and the 7th grade students had a significantly lower level of materialistic values than students from the other five grades. No gender difference was found. Parental rejection was positively correlated with adolescents’ materialistic values, and the relationship was moderated by self-esteem. If faced with parental rejection, adolescents with higher self-esteem were less susceptive, without being as materialistic as those with lower self-esteem.

Conclusion

Parental rejection might thwart adolescents’ basic psychological needs. Therefore, adolescents pursued materialistic aspirations to compensate their needs. Adolescents with higher self-esteem were less materialistic, because they coped with parental rejection more effectively than those with lower self-esteem.

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Notes

  1. We used ANOVA to examine the effect of family monthly income (Group 1 = “Below 1,000 RMB”, Group 2 = “1,000–3,000 RMB”, Group 3 = “3,001–5,000 RMB”, Group 4 = “5,001–10,000 RMB”, Group 5 = “Above 10,000 RMB”) on adolescents’ materialistic values and the effect was marginally significant (F(4, 554) = 2.09, p = .081). Subsequent LSD Post Hoc tests showed that the adolescents whose family monthly income was between 5,000 and 10,000 RMB were more materialistic than the others (Group 1: M = 2.68, SD = 0.90; Group 2: M = 2.79, SD = 0.77; Group 3: M = 2.84, SD = 0.79; Group 4: M = 3.08, SD = 0.90; Group 5: M = 2.94, SD = 0.81), and no significant differences among the adolescents of the other four groups were found.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the MOE Project of Key Research Institutes of Humanities and Social Science at Universities (10JJDXLX002); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China; and National Key Technologies R&D Program of China (2012BAI36B03).

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  1. Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Xinyuan Fu, Yu Kou & Ying Yang

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  1. Xinyuan Fu
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  2. Yu Kou
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  3. Ying Yang
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Correspondence to Yu Kou.

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Fu, X., Kou, Y. & Yang, Y. Materialistic Values Among Chinese Adolescents: Effects of Parental Rejection and Self-esteem. Child Youth Care Forum 44, 43–57 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-014-9269-7

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