Low Self-Esteem and Materialism Goes Hand in Hand
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Rebecca Sato writes about self esteem and materialism in a recent entry on The Daily Galaxy. She starts off with a classic quote from the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.”
The main premise of new research from Lan Nguyen Chaplin (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and Deborah Roedder John (University of Minnesota) is that there’s not just a correlation between low self-esteem and materialism, but also causation.
Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases.
My guess is that this causation could be applied to other human behaviors, like eating disorders (specifically, over-eating). The insidious nature of over-eating and obesity partly comes from eating to feel better. However, the more you eat, the fatter you get, and the more you need to eat to temporarily feel better emotionally.
