Materialism and self-presentational styles

To examine the images that materialistic people wish to convey, we first asked 177 participants to complete the Richins and Dawson (1992) materialism scale and an adjective checklist that assessed five self-presentational styles. In a subsequent experiment, we primed 210 participants to experience one of five self-presentational styles and asked them to complete a state materialism scale. We expected that materialists would tend to avoid supplication and ingratiation, but would self-promote and intimidate. Across both studies, results supported the supplication and ingratiation hypotheses, but failed to show any link between either self-promotion or intimidation and materialism. We discuss how personal insecurity may be a precursor to materialism. We also discuss future research avenues with respect to probing the interrelationship between materialism, insecurity, and self-presentational considerations.