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Is Disciplinary Culture a Moderator Between Materialism and Subjective Well-being? A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

To clarify the influence of disciplinary culture on the materialism–subjective well-being (SWB) relationship, as well as the relationship between changes in materialism and changes in SWB, the current longitudinal study tracked the levels of materialism and SWB among first-year undergraduates for 12 months. A total of 218 participants from a congruent disciplinary culture (i.e., business school) and 210 participants from an incongruent disciplinary culture (i.e., engineering school) provided ratings on the Material Values Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule in three waves. The following results were obtained: (1) the interaction effect of disciplinary culture and time was significant. In Wave 3, the level of materialism in business school was significantly higher than that in engineering school, but this difference was not found in Waves 1 and 2; (2) the negative relationship between materialism and SWB remained stable over time and was not moderated by disciplinary culture. Moreover, disciplinary culture did not moderate the relationship between changes in materialism and changes in SWB. The above findings indicate that disciplinary culture influences the development of materialism but not the materialism–SWB relationship in the long term.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 13BSH055), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31100759).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

      Jiang Jiang & Hongyun Liu

    2. School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100875, China

      Jiang Jiang, Yue Song, Yannan Ke & Hongyun Liu

    3. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China

      Rong Wang

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    Correspondence to Jiang Jiang.

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    Yue Song and Jiang Jiang have contributed equally to this work.

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    Jiang, J., Song, Y., Ke, Y. et al. Is Disciplinary Culture a Moderator Between Materialism and Subjective Well-being? A Three-Wave Longitudinal Study. J Happiness Stud 17, 1391–1408 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-015-9649-1

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