Negative effects of money on society or Materialism is a philosophy that values the material things of life above spiritual or intellectual pursuits. Materialism can be a consequence of other philosophical beliefs, such as physicalism and metaphysical naturalism, in which mind and consciousness are not separate from matter.
Table of Contents
Money and materialism
Negative effects of money on society materialism refers to a preoccupation with the physical world, with one’s possessions, with money and having more than others. It has been linked to lower levels of well-being and higher anxiety and depression. Materialistic people tend to focus on money and possessions as a way of defining their success in life.
Materialism can be encouraged by advertising which promotes a materialist view of happiness and success. Negative effects of money on society tend to think that having more things will make them happier, but studies show that this isn’t true. For example, a study published in Psychological Science found that people who were primed to think about money were less satisfied with their lives than those who weren’t primed to think about money (Kahneman & Knetsch, 1992).
Materialism has been linked to lower levels of well-being and higher anxiety and depression (e.g., Kasser & Ryan, 1993). When people are asked what makes them happy in life, many point out things like relationships, family time and vacations as being important components of happiness. Yet when we look at what people actually do with their time (i.e., how they spend their days), they actually spend very little time engaging in these activities.
Giving people money does not fix the Negative effects of money on society
It is a popular view that the best way to deal with poverty is to give poor people money. But this idea is wrong, and it has harmful consequences for the many people who depend on aid.
The idea that giving people money is better than giving them other types of aid, such as food or medicine, stems from an old experiment conducted in Kenya in 2008 by economists J-C De Loecker, Nora Lustig and Abhijit Banerjee. They wanted to test how much money was needed to lift someone out of poverty. So they gave some people $400 in cash and others $200 plus health insurance, food vouchers or free bednets (mosquito nets).
The researchers found that given cash was more likely than those given other forms of aid to spend it on things like education and business investments. They also found that given cash was more likely to improve their lives and was less likely to return to poverty once they had been lifted out of it. This study has been widely cited as evidence that cash transfers are better than other forms of aid. But there are several reasons why we should be more sceptical about this conclusion.
Money tends to bring out the worst in people
Money can bring out the worst in people. An experiment conducted by researchers at Harvard University showed that people would lie, cheat and steal for money even when they knew that what they were doing was wrong. According to The Atlantic, a recent study on the Negative effects of money on society found that people are more likely to lie in a negotiation if they can get away with it. In fact, they may even go so far as to lie even when there is no chance of getting caught.
In particular, money can make people more selfish, less empathetic and more likely to cheat and steal. The reason has to do with what’s called social comparison theory. We compare ourselves to other people all the time whether it’s how much money we make or how successful we are in our romantic relationships. And when we’re surrounded by people who have more than us, we tend to feel worse about ourselves.
Also Read: Psychological effects of money
The researchers found that this behavior is not limited to just business transactions or negotiations. One experiment revealed that people were willing to take money from an envelope left on a table in an unlocked room, even though there was no guarantee that anyone would ever return it. When it comes to money and relationships, things get even worse. A 2010 study from the University of California Berkeley found that “those who are financially dependent on their partners experience more jealousy over perceived threats of abandonment.
Money can create a competitive environment
Money can create a competitive environment. People are always looking to make more and anyone who has money is perceived as someone who is doing well. It is easy to become jealous of those who have more than you do, but there is no reason to be envious of them. If you are envious of someone else because they have more than you do then it means that you do not have any self-confidence or faith in your abilities.
If you are envious of someone who has more money than you, then all your thoughts will be negative towards them and this will not help your situation at all. You will constantly be thinking about how they got where they are and what advantages they had over you which allowed them to get ahead in life faster than others.
This type of thinking will only make it difficult for you to achieve success because it will cause stress and anxiety which will prevent you from being happy with the progress that you have made so far in life and will also prevent you from making any progress at all since all your energy will go towards trying to figure out how other people got ahead of you instead of using that energy towards improving yourself.
More money doesn’t mean you’re happier
The relationship between income and happiness is complicated, according to a new study by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The study found that while income and happiness tend to go hand-in-hand over time, it’s not because more money leads to more happiness. Instead, it’s because people who are already happy tend to earn more money over time.
Also Read: How does money affect relationships?
“Our main finding is that once you control for a person’s baseline level of happiness or well-being, additional income does not make them any happier,” said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of public affairs at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 6. It analyzed data from two large national surveys one focusing on subjective well-being conducted by Princeton University researchers between 2006 and 2008 and another focusing on household income conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) between 1968 and 2013 with totals representing more than 450,000 respondents total.