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Luu, Tram Van Giang May

University of British Columbia

Both people who compulsively buy and most of those who hoard struggle with excessive acquisition. Excessive acquisition refers to acquiring so many items that distress or functional impairment occur as a result. Social factors are important for day-to-day purchasing decisions. What role do social factors, like materialism and social motivations play in excessive acquisition? And do these roles depend on if the person struggles with hoarding or not? Both a meta-analysis and an online survey were used to investigate these questions. The meta-analysis showed that materialism and compulsive buying were moderately correlated, r = .45, 95% CI [.42, .48]. The online survey examined relations between materialism, social motivations, and excessive acquisition among participants with strong hoarding symptoms (n = 50), compulsive buying symptoms (n = 51), and participants who acquire in a healthy way (n = 119). Participants completed measures of materialism and social motivations, as well as a Q-sort Status-Seeking task. Materialism and depression were more strongly related to acquisition among research participants who have problems with excessive acquiring than among those with non-problematic acquiring, but they did not distinguish people with compulsive buying from those with hoarding symptoms. In terms of social motivations, both concerns over being excluded and wanting to preserve one’s reputation correlated with excessive acquisition, but neither was a significant predictor when accounting for materialism, depression, and age. Moreover, no differences were observed between these two problem behaviours in terms of how strongly excessive acquiring was related to social motives, depression, and materialism. Thus, these two research streams would benefit from greater collaboration for future research and treatment interventions.

Text

2024-05-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/88393

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/