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The early days of COVID introduced a brand new sense of urgency to buying sure objects. Rest room paper, pasta and bread flew off the cabinets as folks stocked up on important provides. Then got here the must-have purchases to assist with the tedium of lockdowns, with scorching tubs, kitchen devices and new pets turning into extraordinarily widespread purchases. So did the pandemic make us usually extra materialistic?
Actually, analysis suggests {that a} tendency in the direction of materialistic behaviour – a concentrate on buying cash and possessions that sign financial and social standing – is attributable to excessive ranges of stress, anxiousness and loneliness. For a lot of, the pandemic has been a aggravating, anxious and lonely interval.
Materialism can be fuelled by media consumption. And early stories discovered that in durations of lockdown and social restrictions, folks turned much more glued to their screens than earlier than.
However regardless of these situations which could have been anticipated to make folks extra materialistic, our analysis means that the other was true. We requested folks within the UK about their beliefs and values earlier than and after the arrival of COVID and located that, general, most individuals have moved to caring much less about cash and materials positive aspects.
They rated objectives like “being financially profitable” and “having a job that pays effectively” decrease than earlier than. Different social values to do with self-acceptance and sharing our lives “with somebody I really like” remained the identical.
We imagine that these adjustments may be defined by different elements associated to the pandemic. For instance, COVID targeted consideration on the significance of well being. Additionally, promoting and social media promoted social values like solidarity and coping with the challenges of a shared expertise.
Not all of our respondents had the identical response, it needs to be mentioned. We used varied knowledge assortment methods to ask a consultant pattern of the UK inhabitants, and individuals who had been extra uncovered to the media and extra anxious about COVID, had been seen to show larger ranges of materialism. However, we discovered an general discount in folks’s materials pursuits.
Contemporary focus
There could also be advantages to such a change in perspective. Analysis has discovered that materialism results in decrease ranges of happiness and life satisfaction, in addition to inflicting unfavourable moods and anxiousness.
But widespread tradition and social media make materialism laborious to keep away from. From a really early age, many kids shortly be taught to affiliate materials acquire with rewards for good behaviour.
As they grow old, they uncover that issues can assist us to current ourselves in a extra interesting method, and acquire different folks’s consideration. Materials objects regularly grow to be extremely desired prizes that additionally assist us to beat a few of our perceived shortfalls.
So as to add to the enchantment, the media and promoting sectors usually promote materialistic beliefs via tales and pictures that hyperlink cash and consumption to happiness, excessive self‐esteem and social recognition.
Learn extra:
Promoting within the pandemic: how firms used COVID as a advertising instrument
After all, large advertisers and advertising departments didn’t fully keep away from their conventional strategies throughout COVID. Our analysis additionally revealed a better variety of social media posts from manufacturers selling consumption as a method to deal with unfavourable feelings and enhance wellbeing.
This, mixed with a widespread discount in worth positioned on monetary and materials acquire, might finally result in the event of polarised mindsets. On the one aspect, it’s potential that many individuals will proceed the development initiated by COVID and slowly drift away from consumerism, doubtlessly bringing deep social penalties: it could already be a part of the rationale for the “nice resignation” within the labour market, the place a better than standard proportion of staff have determined to stop their jobs.
On the opposite aspect, although, the upper variety of adverts and on-line messages which current spending as a path to happiness might have the other consequence. These extra uncovered to social media, like youngsters and younger adults, could also be extra prone to embrace materialism, and encounter a few of the unfavourable results it brings.
This sort of polarised pondering might become a part of the long-term social affect of the worldwide well being disaster, with critical ramifications for youthful generations. A pandemic which pushed many away from the damaging results of materialism might have pulled others a lot nearer in the direction of them.
Olaya Moldes Andrés receives funding from BA/Leverhulme Small Analysis Grants.
