Chronological Summary of the Positive Psychology Meetings “Finding Alternatives to Materialism”

Friday AM Notes:David Mick started the morning discussions asking “Does Consumer Research Offer Hopeful News about Limiting Materialism?” David provided and overview of the history of th

Meetings:

“Finding Alternatives to Materialism”

The Quality of Life Research CenterPeter F Drucker School of Management

Claremont, California 2000

by Jeremy P Hunter

Executive Summary

The meetings of the Positive Psychology Center at Claremont took place on February 25-26; April 14-15; April 28-29 and June 9-10, 2000 It had been decided that the theme for the Spring 2000 meetings was going to be the question: “What can the social sciences do to help provide alternatives to excessive dependence on materialism?” The reason for choosing this topic was the realization that while the U.S has achieved a position of global leadership in terms of economic productivity and democratic institutions, thisachievement had not been matched by a vision of a good life to which all could aspire without exhausting the resources of the planet along the way Isthere a way to slow down the increasingly frantic cycles of production and consumption, while at the same time improving the quality of life?

To answer this question, fifteen individuals, five at a time, were invited each for a weekend in February, April, and June 2000 The idea was to keep

meetings small to optimize diversity while allowing constant face-to-face participation The schedule was as follows: informal get-together Thursday evening; full discussions Friday and Saturday interspersed with outdoors walks, and departure Sunday morning In advance of the meetings, each participant was assigned a question on which he or she was expected to lead

a 2-hour discussion For instance the Director of Education of the Getty Museum was asked to speak to the issue: “What can aesthetic education contribute to setting limits to materialism?” One relevant publication for each participant was also circulated among the whole group in advance of the meeting

Meeting 1: February 25-26, 2000

Participants:

Diane Brigham, Director of Education, Getty Museum, L.A.

Robert Emmons, Psychology, UC Davis

Alexandra Freund, Max Planck Institute, Berlin

David Mick, Univ of Wisconsin Business School, Madison, WI.

Ken Sheldon, Psychology, Univ of Missouri

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, CGU

Jeanne Nakamura, CGU

Jeremy Hunter, CGU

The meetings were intense and extremely stimulating The conversation across disciplinary boundaries was to the point and free of jargon or

professional pretense An enormous number of ideas emerged, and some of the highlights are reported below

Basically, the group agreed that: a) there is increasing evidence in the social sciences to the effect that the correlation of material well-being and

subjective well-being is very weak; b) this fact is not believed by society at large Taken together, these two facts pose a danger for the future, when all the nations of the world will try to outdo each other in efforts to increase subjective well-being by consuming more and more material resources

What can psychology and the other social sciences do to avert the worst consequences of runaway materialism? The consensus of the group focused

on two strategies:

1 Continue research on the relationship between wealth,

consumption, and happiness At the same time, find ways of lettingpeople know how low the correlation is between material and

subjective well-being In this effort, it is important to popularize findings in a dramatic way, enlisting as spokespersons opinion

leaders and media stars like Oprah Winfrey

2 Increase research on conditions that support traits leading to subjective well-being without necessarily depending on material resources, such as autonomy, spirituality, and intrinsic motivation The group concluded that it was important to enlist organizations that would benefit from such knowledge, including the World

Council of Churches, the YMCA, the 4H, the Boy Scouts Also,

practices that provide alternatives to exclusive addiction to materialconsumption ought to be of interest to enlightened businessmen concerned with maintaining a vibrant civil society in a sustainable environment

Friday AM Notes:

David Mick started the morning discussions asking “Does Consumer

Research Offer Hopeful News about Limiting Materialism?” David provided and overview of the history of the role of materialism in consumer research:1970s—Environmental Research

1980s—Definitions, Scales, Correlates of Materialism

(Russell Belk)

1990s—New Perspectives and Research on Materialism

1.Sacred and Profane, Belk, et al

2.Historical, Cross-cultural, self-identity (Belk)

3.Meaning, Measure and Morality of Materialism (Rudmin, Richins)

4.Materialism as Dependence (Mick, Fournier)

5.Consumer Boycotts and Resistance (Dobscha, Mick)

6.Voluntary Simplicity (Rudmin, Kilbourne)

7.Homelessness and Poverty (Hill, Holt)

8.Critical Theory

He then proposed the following alternative questions:

1 “Can Consumer Researchers Help to Limit Materialism?”

2 “Why Should Consumer Researchers Help to Limit Materialism?”

3 “How Should Consumer Researchers Help to Limit Materialism?

4 “Will Consumer Researchers Help to Limit Materialism?”

David also went on to say that the real problem was addiction to

materialism noting that human beings, being sophisticated tool users,

depend on material objects for survival So the human dependence on

objects has existed nearly as long as humanity itself, and certainly longer than civilized humanity However, dependence can be taken to an extreme case where the object plays no larger role in the person’s life outside of the temporary psychic gratification gained through acquisition/possession It is this phenomenon, which seems especially pernicious in consumer cultures Mick notes a distinction raised by Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton of

Instrumental versus Terminal Materialism Terminal materialism typifies

the case where an object is consumed for no other purpose than to consume

it Carried out on a mass scale, this type of behavior causes mass waste withlittle overall psychic gain Conversely, instrumental materialism is a case where an object leads to other ends, for example, the case of a car that offers transportation to work, mobility, etc

David pointed out the connection between terminal materialism and the

Buddhist concept of mindlessness Mindlessness can be described as a

state where a person does not pay full attention to his/her surroundings, internal feelings/motivations/cognitions, etc Mick suggested that terminal materialistic behavior is an expression of automatic behavior encouraged by

constant commercial messages One remedy to this state of affairs is a cultivation of greater sensitivity to one’s purchasing motives and the role that things play in life Furthermore, the idea was raised that people may not

be materialistic enough and only gain a shallow appreciation for the things

they buy and quickly tire of Bob Emmons raised the issue of gratitude and materialism suggesting that by appreciating things more fully, more value can be extracted from them and the need to quickly accumulated something else decreases This could perhaps be called “Deep Materialism” or “PositiveMaterialism.” Skillful consumption could be incorporated into a education program for youth through schools, churches, etc Bob Emmons went on to discuss: “To What Extent Can Spirituality Provide Limits to Materialism”

Relationship between Spirituality and Materialism:

Emmons reports that there are 4 distinct forms of relating spiritualism and materialism

1 Mutual Exclusivity: as exemplified by an anti-materialist

message in Bible (cf Ecclesiastes), in De Tocqueville, etc

2 Affluence Fueling Spirituality: This generally results

from dissatisfaction with high material attainment and provokes search for deeper truths,

3 Isomorphism: “Salvation through Stuff”; shopping as

religious activity (Leach’s Land of Desire history of department store development and role of religion in dep’t store design) and

4 Spirituality Leading to Materialism where God helps

“chosen ones” both spiritually and financially (a.k.a “Prosperity Gospel” or “Consumer Evangelism”)

“Consumption is an issue suited for faith communities Among the

institutions of our society, only the church and the synagogue and the

mosque can still posit some reason for human existence other than the

constant accumulation of stuff” (McKibben, 1996)

Emmons also discussed the role of conditionality and happiness, citing the

research of Bill McIntosh He examined the behavior of “linkers” and linkers.” Linkers are people who believe that their happiness is contingent

“non-on the attainment of important goals, whereas n“non-on-linkers are less attached

to the outcomes of particular goals

Spiritual Alternatives to “Affluenza”

Emmons named at least three alternatives to a materialistic way of life

1 Consecrated consumption/stewardliness: “Nurturing

Nature” where humans take on the role of guardians of nature and realize human responsibility for its impact on nature and duty to protect it

2 Voluntary Simplicity: “Less is More” A nascent social

movement of “downshifting” where people consciously choose remove themselves from the “Accumulation Game” and

emphasize other values like social relationships, volunteerism, etc

3 Cultivating Virtue, which provides

alternatives goals from a materialistic way of life, for example the fostering of gratitude (“Wanting what you have”)…Bob suggests developing research on inducing gratitude in everyday life Coins “Possession Obsession” Ad campaign: “Got Gratitude?”

What are the obstacles to positive motivation?

Ken Sheldon started the discussion by reviewing the future role of positive psychology and the legacy of humanistic psychology One of the failures of humanistic psychology was its failure to build results on an empirical base,

an error which positive psychology seeks not to repeat To this end, Ken discusses the importance of self-organizing systems, flow, enjoyment, and other generative concepts

Through the lens of Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination theory, he

proposed that extrinsically motivated individuals lose out not only in terms ofquality of experience, but ironically, may also lose out in terms of material success, because of the “tragedy of the commons.” He reviewed results of recent social dilemma research and noted their relevance to the emerging

“group selection" paradigm in evolutionary psychology Ken’s results

suggest that when extrinsic rewards are the dominant motivation, people

not only fail to enjoy what they are doing, but also fail to secure as many resources as they intend, because their behavior tends to undermine group-

level performance Whereas intrinsically motivated people both enjoy

their tasks and thrive economically, even though this is not their primary intention

Ken then noted a paradox: if most people say they most favor intrinsic

values, and if people who strongly favor material values tend to be

unhappier than those who don’t, and if they also tend to do no better,

economically, then why does materialism persist? What maintains it? One possibility is that consumer culture and media tend to program extrinsic rewards as the goals for which everyone should strive John Bargh’s

important work on the automatic priming of goals by the environment is relevant

It was observed that we have no systematic programs for inoculating the youth against consumer culture This led into a conversation regarding the role of initiation rites in modern life and how the absence of the

transformative effects of initiations plays out in stunted psyches on a larger

scale The notion of revitalizing traditional youth development

organizations offers a means of teaching skills, enhancing abilities and

channeling interests to structure adolescence to positive, pro-social ends They would also provide meaningful alternatives to consumption, substance abuse, etc

Why material goals are so attractive?

Alexandra Freund discussed next what light action theory can shed on

limiting materialism Action theory suggests that humans are intentional andgoal driven These goals play a central role in human behavior by organizing

attention/action and providing purpose Material goals have clear,

short-term and concrete goals, with immediate feedback, which in part is why they’re so seductive Conversely, other types of goals, like personal

development, require long periods of time, have spotty feedback and are often difficult and painful to pursue The challenge becomes making more worthwhile activities more/as enjoyable as the easy-gratification material ones How, therefore to make nonmaterial goals also clear, concrete and short-term? How can these relate to long-term goals? Can they be dissectedinto smaller short-term goals with same eventual outcome?

Process vs Outcome orientation

There are also differences in quality of experience depending upon one’s goal orientation If one is process oriented, one enjoys the progress

towards the goal and offers a greater number of “enjoyments” along the way.Outcome orientation focuses on lack of attainment and has a short-lived

enjoyment once goal is attained The implication for the quality of life is

enormous If a life is lived with an incessant goal orientation, then large swaths of life will be merely endured, not enjoyed, until a goal is, if ever, reached The temporary lift received from goal attainment recedes as

another goal is selected and embarked upon

How do we slow down?

In our conversations, the role of mindfulness again arose Mick points out

the dilemma of “cognitive misers” who don’t want to think/use attention any more than they have to This often results in stereotyped behavior where mindlessness runs rampant

Mike mentions the Jesuit tradition of instituting daily goals and feedback loops to assess one’s state of being and measure progress, as an example of

a method that fosters appreciation

Program Possibilities:

Ad campaign with Covey to encourage mindfulness

Mindfulness tapes for commuters

Oprah, Oprah, Oprah

Rise of small-group movement (fostering mindful conversation)

Saturday AM Notes:

The Aesthetic Alternative

Sunday morning Diane Brigham offered an art-based exercise for exploration and clearly showed one possible and powerful means for

self-developing alternatives to Materialism She displayed a number of posters from the museum’s collection, and then asked to rest of the participants to look at the artworks with a number of questions in mind, e.g “Which one of these works represents most some elements of your self” What was most revealing about the exercise, was the realization of how deep and emotional experience on is able to obtain if one confronts an object with full attention

and personal engagement We then discussed the role of

creation/appreciation of aesthetics as a possible skill that could be

fostered that would enhance the richness of everyday life We also discussedenhancing the role of museums as social/psychological/spiritual educators

Sheldon suggested that we focus on needs, which enhance the three

dimensions of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.

Program Possibilities:

Gallery of Mindfulness

Museum Skills: “How to Use Museum” pamphlet

Understanding the role of museum/culture centers in economic development

IF MATERIAL VALUES AREN’T THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES TO

PEOPLE, WHY DO THEY ACT AS IF THEY ARE?

3 b/c other goals aren’t accessible Skills and/or awareness low (poor people don’t believe a museum is a place for them)

4 b/c trade-offs for embracing non-M are too great not enough time:

a goals conflict

b delaying gratificationDavid Mick mentioned the Maguire persuasion model and its relevance to developing alternatives to materialism, and enhancing awareness of its

limits According to this model, the process of persuasion starts with

Awareness, then builds up Motivation, requires Skills, and then results in Behavior

From this it was decided that research should continue to focus on:

1 The psychic costs of materialism,

2 Developing a picture of life in which there are socially legitimate alternatives to materialistic goals that

can be widely pursued by most people

 Revitalize youth organizations

 Service orgs (and other civil society networks)

 ILMS (Library-Museum Studies)

 Meditation Groups

The meeting adjourned with the understanding that at least tow more

weekends with a different cast of characters would confront these issues, and that if good ideas continued to emerge, those participants who are

motivated to do so would convene for a larger meeting later this year At this meeting, concrete steps towards publication, diffusion and

implementation would be taken

Meeting 2, April 14-15, 2000

Participants:

Attilah Olah, Eotovos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

Larry Gianinno, William T Grant Foundation, New York

Kevin, Rathunde, The University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Regula Pfister, Psychological Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, CGU

Jeanne Nakamura, CGU

Jeremy Hunter, CGU

Executive Summary

The theme of the meeting that arose revolved around the notion of

“Attention, Consumption, and the Self.” The presentations built on both the work of the previous meeting and on each other All the presentations

focused on the role of attention in consumption and on how a person can bolster one’s defenses against mindless materialism

Larry Gianinno brought to bear his considerable knowledge of advertising and media practices, as well as his own research in economic practices of youth to examine the various reasons one consumes goods

Kevin Rathunde explored the notion of abiding interest, a relationship

between world and self, and its promise for a deeper satisfaction than a terminal materialism

Attilah Olah reported on his model of a psychological immune system, a set

of measurable traits that protect against stress, illness, as well various

addictions, like materialism

Regula Pfister shared with us her research findings that speak to the notion explored in the Center’s first meeting: if materialistic goals are not as

satisfying as non-material ones, why do people keep pursuing them?

Friday AM Notes:

The Economy of the Self

Larry Gianinno began the session by exploring the nature of what might be

called “the economy of the self” and proposed an alternative definition of

thinking about economic behavior, contrary to the traditional idea of people

as rational actors in a monetary economy Gianinno offered instead the

concept that the economy is a system in which people related to each other in regards satisfying wants and needs Expanding the notion of

“allocation of scarce resources” to cultural contexts, this diversified view of

economic practices can be applied to other, non-financial, resources like

attention and by extension social relationships, values, affect, and so

are often guided by social scripts (e.g “how to behave at a restaurant”)

which are learned at an early age and govern/guide behavior in certain

contexts

Social rules that govern exchanges are often influenced by social distance

(the closeness of a person’s social ties to another person) and as social

distance decreases, relationships become more efficient as trust increases and defenses can be dispensed with This also ties into the notion that

affect guides much of economic decision-making Research suggests that as persons age, non-economic factors become increasingly

important

Taking the concept of laddering from advertising practices, meaning is construed by three points of attentional focus:

Attributes (physical, symbolic properties)

Benefits (functional, social, psychological properties)

Values (moral, or ethical properties) (e.g “Green goods”)

These three categories serve to distinguish perceptions of products from each other And represent the images that advertisers manipulate to

encourage an economic connection However economists tend to ignore

these factors and provide no shared lexicon of consumption practices Religions once provided reference points for economic behavior, but these

influences have weakened in the face of growing secularization Now

material success has become the only reference point of “positive

development.” Without a linguistic referent, Giannino suggests that people revert to intuitive schemes and explanations for their behavior

A shared formal language of consumption would provide symbolic tools

that would foster:

Awareness of Economic Agents

Awareness of Types of Economic Exchanges

Awareness of Motives which Guide Economic Behavior

Define Positive notion of fully functioning personhood to aim for

Focus on fostering Generativity (Biological, Parental, Work, Cultural legacies),

as research shows that children need more than material goods to have a good life

Abiding Interest & Materialism

Kevin Rathunde discussed the role of families in cultivating children's abidinginterest The literal meaning of the word "interest" to be between

suggests a person-environment relationship Abiding interest, therefore, can

be thought of as a sustained and evolving relationship between the self and the world Kevin proposed that focusing attention through an abiding

interest is likely to make children less susceptible to mindless materialism, and the family environment is an important context for the cultivation of children's ability to focus attention

There are many concepts in the social sciences that could be used to shed light on dynamics of abiding interest Kevin chose terminology from G Labouvie-Vief & H Werner to discuss two, interrelated modes or ways of using attention that presumably must work in close synchrony in order to sustain interest

The first mode uses immediate perceptual processes and creates a close, undifferentiated identification between the self and the object of attention Labouvie-Vief referred to this mode as "mythos" and Werner called it

"physiognomic perception." The second mode uses logical/rational

processes to separate the self from the object of attention, think more

objectivity, set goals, and so on Labouvie-Vief called this mode "logos" and Werner named it "technical perception." Abiding interest presumably

depends upon the synchrony of these two modes such that there is a

flexible movement between them, and each can inform the other Similarly, Labouvie-Vief suggested that "wisdom" required the synchrony between mythos and logos, and Werner thought that creativity depended upon the flexible interrelation between physiognomic and technical perception

KR hypothesized three types of materialistic behavior that may relate to the separation or coordination of these two modes In other words, the over-emphasis of immediate processes or rational processes may result in

different (negative) patterns of consumption, while the coordination of the two modes may be linked with a healthier, meaning-making pattern

Blind Materialism (analogous to a "weak instrumental" form of Materialism, see "The Meaning of Things" by Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton and Dewey’s concept of "fooling") focuses on immediate pleasure and comfort and, therefore, consumption is not meaningfully related to future experience

or goals

Empty Materialism (=Terminal Materialism) focuses on attaining goals that are not intrinsically related to the self; such goals are more likely to arise from an external source (e.g., media, social comparison)

Relational Materialism ("Strong Instrumental") can be seen as a pattern of consumption that furthers a self-other relationship (i.e., an abiding interest).For instance, a person might purchase a piece of furniture for their home based on an interest in a particular era or style

The question becomes "How can families help set limits to materialism by cultivating the abiding interests of their children?"

Kevin's research on the family has found that the combination of familial support and challenge (analogous but not identical to Baumrind's notion of responsive and demanding parenting) is associated with adolescents'

abiding interest, or the synchrony of positive immediate moods while

focusing on meaningful long-term goals In contrast, high support and low challenge in the family is associated with positive immediate experience that is unconnected to goals, and low support and high challenge in the family is associated with a pattern of goal-striving that is disconnected to positive immediate experience Kevin hypothesized that adolescents from these three types of families might have different patterns of consumption that mirror the relational, blind, and empty materialism patterns,

respectively

Kevin also discussed several ways that the optimal, support/challenge

pattern might be enhanced in families: fostering secure attachments by avoiding the over- or under-stimulation of infants; providing children with opportunities to enjoy working hard on meaningful goals (i.e., bringing

together the two components of abiding interest); and having parents model

a pattern of abiding interest in their own lives Finally, an emphasis was placed on communication in the family and the possibility of helping families

to learn how to extend and elaborate conversations Conversation in the family, and the ability to build a shared reality through progressive

discourse exchange, may be one of the most important contexts for

socializing children to have more flexible control over their attention Good

communication requires a blending of "subjective" immediacy with

"objective" reflection on the stream of conversation

Program Possibilities:

 Interactive PBS show on "The Healthy Family"

 Mediascope (Hubert Jessup) encodes research into primetime programs

 20/20 segment on parenting?

 Examples of families with Abiding Interest in magazines like Child, Parents, Parade

 Campaign to synchronize message

 Benton foundation website which disseminates academic

findings to general audience

Friday PM Notes:

A Psychological Immune System

Attila Olah next reported on his development of a model of healthy human

functioning, called the Psychological Immune System He followed the theme of preventative efforts to create healthy individuals who would

be less likely to fall prey to the pernicious aspects of materialism

The model of the immune systems comes in three parts and synthesizes various psychological concepts that have been offered as part of the “good person” like self-esteem, optimism, or ego-resilience In this case, a

healthy person is one who solves adaptive tasks with subjective well-being and life satisfaction and is able to create a good fit

between behavior and context The model has been operationalized in

the PIS inventory, which has good psychometric characteristics and

convergent validity The inventory measures the following aspects of the psychic immune system:

The Approach-Belief Subsystem (ABS) measures the extent to which

a person trusts the environment and his or her ability to make a difference in it It is composed of the following dimensions:

 Change and Challenge Orientation

 Social Monitoring Capacity

 Creative Self-Concept

 Social Mobilizing Capacity

 Self-Efficacy

 Goal Orientation

 Problem Solving Capacity

 Social Creating Capacity

The Self-Regulating Subsystem (SRS) refers to the ability to change adaptively as required.

 Synchronicity (the ability to keep step with environmentalchanges, to pulse in sync with the present events in an open andflexible manner.)

Why do Material Goals Persist II?

Regula Pfister reported research results from a study using the Experience Sampling method (ESM) with Swiss workers She offered an explanation of why materialism persists even though non-material goals may be favored bypeople While people were in flow while working, they reported being in a paradoxical state: stressed, anxious and angry, yet powerful and alert as well However, when they experienced flow in leisure, they felt powerful as well as relaxed (but they experienced flow in leisure much more rarely than

at work) While working, Challenges were found to be positively correlated

to both positive and negative activation Flow at work was unrelated to

momentary happiness and satisfaction, but it correlated positively with term happiness and satisfaction

long-The implication of these findings is that when engaged in materialistic

consumption challenges are low, which leads to positive but short-lived

reward These findings corroborate Ken Sheldon’s notions from the first

meeting

Saturday PM Discussion:

The meeting concluded that Materialistic behavior is not necessarily bad, that positive outcomes may be associated with it like self-expression,