A Comparative Study of Social Comparison, Materialism, and Subjective Well-Being in the U. S., China, Croatia, and India

Abstract

As the globalization of markets spreads Western media and consumerism across the world, it raises the question as to whether the arguments proposed by theories of social comparison and cultivation hold true in non-Western societies. In this study, we test the relationships between social comparison associated with television programming, materialism, and subjective well-being among college students from the United States, China, Croatia, and India. Structural equation modeling results reveal that the positive relationship between social comparison and materialism is universal. However, the mediating role of materialism between social comparison and subjective well-being is different between individualistic and collectivistic societies.