The Experimental Research on the Influence of Materialism and the Emotion of Awe on Life Satisfaction and Products Preference

Abstract

The materialism plays a negative role in people's life that if people have high materialism, normally they would show low life satisfaction and excessively pursue the material world but neglect the spiritual world. However, the emotion of awe, as a typical kind of positive emotions, can help people to raise their satisfaction in life and also promote people to approach the spiritual world. In this study, we used an experiment to investigate how the emotion of awe can offset against the negative impact from materialism on people. The results of the experiment indicated that if people experienced the awe emotion, no matter how high their materialism level were, they would increase their life satisfaction. And the people with high materialism would turn to prefer to the experience-based products when they acquired the emotion of awe.

Effects of Ethnicity and Spiritual Intelligence in the Relationship Between Awe and Life Satisfaction Among Chinese Primary School Teachers

“…One of the studies induced the experiences of happiness, calmness, and awe through two different methods, namely, a video program and a reading task. It was found that individuals who have experienced awe tend to choose products that offer a spiritual experience, and awe can offset the negative effects of materialism and enable people to actively face life and pursue the spiritual life, and it also implies a higher level of life satisfaction (Rudd et al, 2012;Van Cappellen and Saroglou, 2012;Ye and Dong, 2015).…”

“…Zhu (2005) believes that awe is a kind of moral emotion with the educational value of being able to reach the soul and develop the spirit. Spirituality can be awakened and developed through awe at the wonder of life, nature, and the universe (Saroglou et al, 2008;Van Cappellen et al, 2013;Ye and Dong, 2015), and spiritual experience can promote the development of spiritual intelligence (Vaughan, 2002;Green and Noble, 2010). This finding that awe enables change in the mental model of primary school teachers is consistent with previous studies.…”

Components of tourists' palace cuisine dining experiences: the case of ottoman-concept restaurants

“…According to Coghlan et al (2012), awe is the most intended output for restaurant managers since they desire their customers to be satisfied with their food or services. Moreover, Tian et al (2015) demonstrated that a sense of awe created tourist satisfaction and loyalty.…”

Materialism on Students' Behavior

“…In contrasting opinion, a study by (Tian & Lu, 2015) stated that people with high materialism play a negative role in which their life would normally show low life satisfaction and excessively chasing the material world. In addition to this, (Datu, 2017) articulated that students high in materialism have poorer engagement and achievement, and these associations are partially mediated by lower motivation.…”