Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being. He shows that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of unhappiness, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy—regardless of age, income, or culture.
Drawing on a decade's worth of empirical data, Kasser examines what happens when we organize our lives around materialistic pursuits. He looks at the effects on our internal experience and interpersonal relationships, as well as on our communities and the world at large. He shows that materialistic values actually undermine our well-being, as they perpetuate feelings of insecurity, weaken the ties that bind us, and make us feel less free.
Kasser not only defines the problem but proposes ways we can change ourselves, our families, and society to become less materialistic. Does money buy happiness? For years, social scientists knew relatively little about this important question.
Now that has changed. On the basis of more than a decade's worth of original research, Tim Kasser provides a powerful answer—materialism undermines human well-being. The High Price of Materialism is a path-breaking work that suggests a fundamental rethinking of our values, behaviors, and economic structures.
Deserves the widest possible readership. An excellent, thorough, insightful examination of object hedonism and its psychological costs. Well-written to boot. What an irony: Lusting for and getting what we want—more—does not, in the long run, make middle class folks happier. Seeking ever more affluence exacts both environmental and psychic costs.
So why not dream a new American dream, asks Kasser in this provocative and practical book—one focused more on meaning than money, and more on connection than consumption. It is rare that a book combines insightful scholarship, rigorous research, passionate involvement in its subject, and a focus on a topic of true importance to the human condition.
In his careful, caring, and constructive examination of materialism, Tim Kasser has created a brilliant analysis of a growing problem and its possible solutions. A much-needed scholarly analysis of the psychological factors surrounding materialism in contemporary America. Tim Kasser's book nails the whopping lie at the heart of our civilization: the belief that having more money and the things that money buys makes us happier.
The truth, as he demonstrates so comprehensively and thoroughly, is that materialism breeds, not happiness, but dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, anger, isolation, and alienation.
The importance of Kasser's message is difficult to overestimate; it reaches beyond our personal lives to the world situation. The global economy requires for its continued stability and growth that those of us in the West—and Americans especially—consume more and more.
A vast media-marketing-advertising industrial complex serves this purpose. As a result of the consumer binge, our individual health suffers, social cohesion declines, and the biosphere is degraded.
Share This Paper. Methods Citations. Citation Type. Has PDF. Publication Type. More Filters. The relationship between materialistic values and environmental attitudes and behaviors: A meta-analysis. A growing body of evidence suggests that materialistic values may be negatively associated with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors.
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