Asia’s materialists: Reconciling collectivism and materialism

Materialism has an ugly face. The dominant view of materialism regards materialists as self-prioritizing individuals who oppose collective and prosocial goals in favor of a lifestyle led by money, possessions, and status. The present research argues that there is a side of materialism that is concerned with collective-oriented interests. We examine the nature and consequences of collective-oriented materialism – the belief system that ascribes importance to possessions for their symbolic and signaling capacities to construct desirable social attributes. Drawing from cultural and consumer theories, we find considerable support that materialists espouse a collective-oriented quality to an otherwise self-oriented interest towards possessions.