- Email: [email protected]
The role of materialism in self-disclosure within close relationships
Personality and Individual Differences 111 (2017) 174–177
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Short Communication
The role of materialism in self-disclosure within close relationships Chin-ming Hui ⁎, O-suet Tsang Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 20 December 2016 Received in revised form 1 February 2017 Accepted 2 February 2017 Available online xxxx Keywords: Materialism Self-disclosure Responsiveness Close relationships
a b s t r a c t Research has reliably shown a negative association between materialism and relationship well-being. This study examined a possible link between materialism and self-disclosure exchange, a process that is central to relationship adjustment. To address this question, we recruited dating couples for a videotaped self-disclosure task. In each session, partners took turns to be a discloser or a listener. Participants' disclosure level (when they were disclosers) and responsiveness level (when they were listeners) were assessed by ratings from the participants, their partner, and trained coders. The results showed that actor's disclosure level was negatively associated with partner's materialism, whereas actor's responsiveness was negatively associated with actor's and partner's materialism. Materialism appears to be related to poor self-disclosure processes within close relationships. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Materialism has been shown to relate to negative relationship functioning (Carroll, Dean, Call, & Busby, 2011; Dean, Carroll, & Yang, 2007). This study was proposed to further examine the role of materialism in one important interpersonal process, namely self-disclosure.
2. Materialism and well-being Materialism is defined as “a set of values and goals focused on wealth, possessions, image, and status” (Kasser, 2016, p. 489). A recent meta-analysis (Dittmar, Bond, Hurst, & Kasser, 2014) showed that materialism is consistently associated with poor personal well-being. Importantly, the meta-analysis also revealed that materialistic individuals have poor well-being because they prioritize extrinsic goals that cannot fulfill their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Although close relationships are a vital source of need fulfillment and well-being (Finkel, Hui, Carswell, & Larson, 2014; Knee, Hadden, Porter, & Rodriguez, 2013), it is clear that materialistic individuals tend to have poor close relationships (Carroll et al., 2011; Dean et al., 2007). This study focused on self-disclosure, as a vehicle to understand how materialism may relate to poor interpersonal functioning.
3. Materialism in self-disclosure: its impact on disclosure level and responsiveness Self-disclosure process is critical to the development of intimacy and relationship well-being (e.g., Collins & Miller, 1994). In particular, we studied self-disclosure level and responsiveness. Self-disclosure level is defined by the extent to which a person tells a partner about his or her intimate feelings, attitudes, experiences (Sprecher & Hendrick, 2004). Responsiveness is defined by the extent to which a person understands, validates, and cares for the partner's (disclosed) needs (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004). Our first hypothesis is that materialistic individuals are less responsive to their partner's needs. Materialistic individuals tend to value selfpromotion over interpersonal bonds (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Li, Lim, Tsai, & O, 2015). As a consequence, materialistic individuals should be less responsive to their partner's needs, given their devaluation of close relationships (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). When a person expects the partner to be unresponsive to one's disclosed needs, he or she is less willing to self-disclose (Lemay & Melville, 2014; Wood & Forest, 2016). Accordingly, our second hypothesis is that, given that materialistic individuals are less responsive (as predicted in the first hypothesis), their partner should disclose less.
4. Overview of the study
⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Hui).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.021 0191-8869/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This study recruited dating couples to engage in videotaped selfdisclosure interactions, so that we could directly assess the contributions of both partners' materialism in a more controlled setting. Furthermore, participants' self-disclosure level and responsiveness during the interactions were rated by themselves, their partner, and trained coders.
C. Hui, O. TsangPersonality and Individual Differences 111 (2017) 174–177
Therefore, we could test the effect of materialism without sole reliance of self-reports. Self-report measures of relationship quality and need fulfillment were also included, in an attempt to replicate the established negative associations between materialism and these variables (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2014). Based on the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006), we tested if actor's outcome variables could be predicted by actor's materialism (actor effect) and partner's materialism (partner effect). 5. Method 5.1. Participants A power analysis was conducted to determine the minimum number of couples needed to carry APIM analyses (Ackerman, Ledermann, & Kenny, 2016). We assumed that (a) the within-dyad correlations of the independent variable (i.e., materialism) and dependent variables were moderate (all rs = 0.30) and that (b) according to our hypotheses, for each dependent variable, only one actor or partner effect of materialism was present. Based on these assumptions, to detect the actor or partner effect (with a moderate magnitude; β = −0.30), a minimum of 43 couples (n = 86) should be recruited to achieve a power of 0.80. College students were recruited via mass mails and flyers posted in the campus. Forty-seven heterosexual dating couples participated in this study. Two couples were excluded in the analyses, as the self-disclosure exercises were not properly recorded. The final sample consisted of forty-five dating couples (MAge = 20.63, SD = 1.86, range = 18–26), meeting the minimum requirement. The average relationship length was 18.02 months (SD = 17.14; range = 2–77 months).
175
free to be who I am”). Participants rated these items on 7-point scales (1 = not at all to 7 = extremely). 5.3.3. Disclosure level and responsiveness: Self-ratings and partner's ratings Participants then completed two counter-balanced sets of questions related to the self-disclosure exercises. In one set of questions, participants reported their experiences as a discloser. Specifically, they reported their own level of disclosure to their partner on three items constructed for this study (“How much did you tell your partner about yourself?”, “How much did you disclose your private experiences?”, and “How honest were you with your partner?”; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Participants also indicated their partner's responsiveness to their own needs on a 6-item responsiveness scale (e.g., “My partner tried to be sensitive to my feelings”; 1 = not at all to 5 = very much; Canevello & Crocker, 2010). In the other set of questions, participants reported their experiences as a listener. Specifically, they reported their partner's disclosure level and their own responsiveness to their partner's needs. The same scales were used after changes of the targets (e.g., “How much did your partner tell you about himself or herself?”). Therefore, each participant's disclosure level and responsiveness were assessed by both self-rating and partner's rating. 5.3.4. Disclosure level and responsiveness: ratings by coders The videotaped self-disclosure was coded by six trained raters. Three coders rated the participants' disclosure level when they took the role of discloser, whereas the other three rated the participants' responsiveness when they took the role of listener. Again, the same scales were used after changes of the targets (e.g., “How much did the discloser tell his or her partner about himself or herself?”).
5.2. Procedures
5.4. Analytic strategy
One couple was recruited for each session. Upon arrival, the partners were assigned to complete questionnaires in separate cubicles. Each participant was asked to nominate one negative event to be disclosed to the partner later in the study. Specifically, the event to be nominated should occur outside the relationship and make the participant feel either sad, anxious, or afraid of. The couple then engaged in two 10-minute self-disclosure exercises. In the first exercise, one partner was assigned to be a discloser and the other a listener. The discloser then disclosed the event he or she had chosen earlier, whereas the listener freely responded to the discloser's disclosure. In the second exercise, participants switched roles and repeated the exercise. Both exercises were videotaped. Afterward, participants returned to the cubicles and completed the remaining questionnaires.
Given that participants' responses were nested within couples, the statistical dependence was controlled via multilevel analyses with the aid of SPSS Mixed Model (Campbell & Kashy, 2002). As partners of each couple were distinguishable by sex, actor's sex was specified in fixed-effects and random-effects estimates. Based on the APIM (Kenny et al., 2006), we modeled the fixed effects of actor's and partner's materialism (plus actor's sex) simultaneously on actor's outcomes to examine the actor and partner effects of materialism.
5.3. Measures Except for materialism, all measures were administered after the self-disclosure exercises. 5.3.1. Materialism Participants completed an 18-item material values scale (Richins & Dawson, 1992; e.g., “I like a lot of luxury in my life”) on 5-point scales (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). 5.3.2. Relationship quality and need fulfillment Participants completed two scales regarding their perception of relationship quality and need fulfillment within the relationship. Relationship quality was measured by an 18-item perceived relationship quality components inventory (Fletcher, Simpson, & Thomas, 2000; e.g., “How satisfied are you with your relationship?”). Need fulfillment was measured by a 9-item need satisfaction scale (La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000; e.g., “As I am with my partner now, I feel
6. Results Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. Table 2 summarizes the APIM analyses. Each participant's disclosure level and responsiveness were independently rated by the participant, his or her partner, and a group of coders. Past research suggested that the ratings from these three sources are important and yet non-redundant markers (Canevello & Crocker, 2010; Lemay, Clark, & Feeney, 2007). Since we did not have any a priori predictions regarding which of these markers allowed more sensitive tests of our hypotheses, we decided to use the average across the three indices for statistical inferences. The analyses for the separate indices are also presented in the table. Supporting our two hypotheses, analyses showed that, in the selfdisclosure exercises, actor's responsiveness was negatively associated with actor's materialism, whereas actor's disclosure level was negatively associated with partner's materialism. Surprisingly, partner's materialism was also negatively related to actor's responsiveness. These overall results demonstrated the roles of materialism on the self-disclosure process. In addition, replicating the past findings (Dittmar et al., 2014), actor's relationship quality and need fulfillment were negatively related to actor's materialism. Partner's materialism was also negatively related to actor's relationship quality.
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C. Hui, O. TsangPersonality and Individual Differences 111 (2017) 174–177
Table 1 Descriptive statistics of the measures. Measures
Materialism Disclosure level Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Responsiveness Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Relationship quality Need fulfillment
α
Male
Female
M
SD
M
SD
Gender difference t
Male-female correlation r
0.78
2.77
0.40
2.76
0.42
0.15
0.39⁎⁎
0.74 0.79 0.74a 0.42
3.93 3.77 3.51 3.74
0.65 0.68 0.62 0.39
4.00 3.88 3.67 3.85
0.56 0.75 0.59 0.48
−0.56 −0.71 −1.52 −1.72†
−0.06 −0.07 0.35⁎ 0.49⁎⁎
0.90 0.92 0.81a 0.56 0.95 0.84
4.35 4.19 3.12 3.89 5.84 5.44
0.51 0.54 0.72 0.46 0.87 0.91
4.22 4.33 3.41 3.99 5.90 5.45
0.51 0.63 0.59 0.41 0.74 0.76
1.18 −1.45 −2.85⁎⁎ −2.04⁎ −0.39 −0.02
0.07 0.45⁎⁎ 0.47⁎⁎ 0.71⁎⁎ 0.35⁎ 0.25†
a
The inter-rater reliability is reported. † p b 0.10. ⁎ p b 0.05. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
Additional multilevel analyses revealed that actor's sex did not moderate the actor effect, | t | s b 1.20, ps N 0.24, and the partner effect, |t|s b 1.35, ps N 0.18, of materialism. The results suggested that the effects of materialism were comparable across actors of different sexes. 7. Discussion This study recruited dating couples to engage in videotaped self-disclosure interactions and measured self-disclosure level and responsiveness by self-reports, partner's reports, and coders' ratings. Using the average scores across these different ratings, the analyses supported our two hypotheses that (a) materialistic individuals are less responsive to the partner's needs and (b) individuals disclose less to a materialistic partner. We also found an unpredicted negative association between actor's responsiveness and partner's materialism. This result may reflect an actor's attempt to reciprocate the unresponsiveness of a materialistic partner (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). There are three major limitations in this study. First, this study was correlational, and hence we could not demonstrate the causal effect of materialism. Second, in this study, it may be tempting to test if selfdisclosure process serves as a mediator between materialism and relationship well-being. However, we could not completely rule out the alternative mediational hypothesis that poor relationship quality mediates the link between materialism and self-disclosure process. As our study design was not set up to test these two competing hypotheses, Table 2 Multilevel analyses: the actor and partner effects of materialism.
Variables Actor's disclosure level Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Actor's responsiveness Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Actor's relationship quality Actor's need fulfillment a
1 = male, 1 = female. † p b 0.10. ⁎ p b 0.05. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
Actor's sexa
Actor's materialism
Partner's materialism
β
t
β
t
β
t
0.06 0.08 0.13 0.13
0.57 0.76 1.52 1.81†
−0.09 −0.05 −0.05 −0.07
−0.76 −0.47 −0.52 −0.69
−0.19 −0.36 −0.16 −0.31
−1.68† −3.28⁎⁎ −1.50 −3.23⁎⁎
−0.12 0.12 0.22 0.12 0.03 −0.00
−1.18 1.48 2.82⁎⁎ 2.02⁎
−0.29 −0.19 −0.18 −0.30 −0.30 −0.41
−2.70⁎⁎ −1.99† −1.84† −3.43⁎⁎ −3.16⁎⁎ −4.19⁎⁎
−0.18 −0.35 −0.20 −0.34 −0.27 −0.10
−1.64 −3.67⁎⁎ −2.08⁎ −3.94⁎⁎ −2.79⁎⁎
0.38 −0.03
−1.03
we decided not to conduct any mediational analyses. Finally, turntaking is common in daily self-disclosure (Sprecher, Treger, Wondra, Hilaire, & Wallpe, 2013). Similarly, participants in this study were asked to play both roles of discloser and listener. It seems inevitable that participants' experiences in the earlier role (e.g., disclosing to an unresponsive partner) may incidentally influence their behaviors in the later role (e.g., unresponsive listening). Future studies should minimize such carryover effects. Three future directions are worth pursuing. First, as participants recruited in this study were college students and in a relatively short relationship, future studies should test if the findings are generalizable to older adults and highly committed relationships (e.g., marriage). Second, future studies should continue to explore the roles of materialism on relationship dynamics that demand mutual responsiveness (e.g., conflict resolution; Reis et al., 2004). Second, materialism typically comes from a sense of insecurity (e.g., Chang & Arkin, 2002). Given that materialism is malleable (Kasser, 2016), future research may explore the possibility of reducing materialism via promoting security in close relationships.
8. Conclusion In sum, this study demonstrated the association between materialism and self-disclosure processes. Specifically, using a dyadic design, we found that an actor's exchange in self-disclosure is affected by both the actor's and the partner's materialism. Future research should continue to examine the role of materialism in interpersonal processes.
Acknowledgements This project was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council's Early Career Scheme (ECS) (24600415). We are also indebted to Wing-yu Lai, Phipson Lee, Pik-ka Li, Natalie Shieh, Hin-on So, Yu-hei Shum for their careful coding and Luxi Fang and Jeremy Lin for study administration. References Ackerman, R. A., Ledermann, T., & Kenny, D. A. (2016). Power analysis for the actor-partner interdependence model. (Retrieved from https://robert-ackerman.shinyapps.io/ APIMPowerR/). Burroughs, J. E., & Rindfleisch, A. (2002). Materialism and well-being: A conflicting values perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 29, 348–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ 344429. Campbell, L., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Estimating actor, partner, and interaction effects for dyadic data using PROC MIXED and HLM: A user-friendly guide. Personal Relationships, 9, 327–342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6811.00023. Canevello, A., & Crocker, J. (2010). Creating good relationships: Responsiveness, relationship quality, and interpersonal goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 78–106. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018186. Carroll, J. S., Dean, L. R., Call, L. L., & Busby, D. M. (2011). Materialism and marriage: Couple profiles of congruent and incongruent spouses. Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, 10, 287–308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15332691.2011.613306. Chang, L. C., & Arkin, R. M. (2002). Materialism as an attempt to cope with uncertainty. Psychology and Marketing, 19, 389–406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mar.10016. Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116, 457–475. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.457. Dean, L. R., Carroll, J. S., & Yang, C. (2007). Materialism, perceived financial problems, and marital satisfaction. Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal, 35, 260–281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1077727X06296625. Dittmar, H., Bond, R., Hurst, M., & Kasser, T. (2014). The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 879–924. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/A0037409. Finkel, E. J., Hui, C. M., Carswell, K. D., & Larson, G. M. (2014). The suffocation of marriage: Climbing Mount Maslow without enough oxygen. Psychological Inquiry, 25, 1–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840x.2014.863723. Fletcher, G. J. O., Simpson, J. A., & Thomas, G. (2000). The measurement of perceived relationship quality components: A confirmatory factor analytic approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 340–354. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167 200265007. Kasser, T. (2016). Materialistic values and goals. Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 489–514. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033344. Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., & Cook, W. (2006). Dyadic data analysis. New York: Guilford.
C. Hui, O. TsangPersonality and Individual Differences 111 (2017) 174–177 Knee, C. R., Hadden, B. W., Porter, B., & Rodriguez, L. M. (2013). Self-determination theory and romantic relationship processes. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17, 307–324. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1088868313498000. La Guardia, J. G., Ryan, R. M., Couchman, C. E., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Within-person variation in security of attachment: A self-determination theory perspective on attachment, need fulfillment, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 367–384. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.3.367. Lemay, E. P., Jr., & Melville, M. C. (2014). Diminishing self-disclosure to maintain security in partners' care. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 37–57. http://dx.doi. org/10.1037/a0034161. Lemay, E. P., Jr., Clark, M. S., & Feeney, B. C. (2007). Projection of responsiveness to needs and the construction of satisfying communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 834–853. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.834. Li, N. P., Lim, A. J. Y., Tsai, M. -H., & O, J. (2015). Too materialistic to get married and have children? PloS One, 10, e0126543. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0126543. Reis, H. T., Clark, M. S., & Holmes, J. G. (2004). Perceived partner responsiveness as an organizing construct in the study of intimacy and closeness. In D. J. Mashek, & A. P. Aron
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(Eds.), Handbook of closeness and intimacy (pp. 201–225). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Richins, M. L., & Dawson, S. (1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 303–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2489391. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68. Sprecher, S., & Hendrick, S. S. (2004). Self-disclosure in intimate relationships. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 857–877. http://dx.doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.6.857.54803. Sprecher, S., Treger, S., Wondra, J. D., Hilaire, N., & Wallpe, K. (2013). Taking turns: Reciprocal self-disclosure promotes liking in initial interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 860–866. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.017. Wood, J. V., & Forest, A. L. (2016). Self-protective yet self-defeating: The paradox of low self-esteem people's self-disclosures. In M. O. James, & P. Z. Mark (Eds.), Advances in experimental social psychology. Vol. 53. (pp. 131–188). Academic Press.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Short Communication
The role of materialism in self-disclosure within close relationships Chin-ming Hui ⁎, O-suet Tsang Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 20 December 2016 Received in revised form 1 February 2017 Accepted 2 February 2017 Available online xxxx Keywords: Materialism Self-disclosure Responsiveness Close relationships
a b s t r a c t Research has reliably shown a negative association between materialism and relationship well-being. This study examined a possible link between materialism and self-disclosure exchange, a process that is central to relationship adjustment. To address this question, we recruited dating couples for a videotaped self-disclosure task. In each session, partners took turns to be a discloser or a listener. Participants' disclosure level (when they were disclosers) and responsiveness level (when they were listeners) were assessed by ratings from the participants, their partner, and trained coders. The results showed that actor's disclosure level was negatively associated with partner's materialism, whereas actor's responsiveness was negatively associated with actor's and partner's materialism. Materialism appears to be related to poor self-disclosure processes within close relationships. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Materialism has been shown to relate to negative relationship functioning (Carroll, Dean, Call, & Busby, 2011; Dean, Carroll, & Yang, 2007). This study was proposed to further examine the role of materialism in one important interpersonal process, namely self-disclosure.
2. Materialism and well-being Materialism is defined as “a set of values and goals focused on wealth, possessions, image, and status” (Kasser, 2016, p. 489). A recent meta-analysis (Dittmar, Bond, Hurst, & Kasser, 2014) showed that materialism is consistently associated with poor personal well-being. Importantly, the meta-analysis also revealed that materialistic individuals have poor well-being because they prioritize extrinsic goals that cannot fulfill their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Although close relationships are a vital source of need fulfillment and well-being (Finkel, Hui, Carswell, & Larson, 2014; Knee, Hadden, Porter, & Rodriguez, 2013), it is clear that materialistic individuals tend to have poor close relationships (Carroll et al., 2011; Dean et al., 2007). This study focused on self-disclosure, as a vehicle to understand how materialism may relate to poor interpersonal functioning.
3. Materialism in self-disclosure: its impact on disclosure level and responsiveness Self-disclosure process is critical to the development of intimacy and relationship well-being (e.g., Collins & Miller, 1994). In particular, we studied self-disclosure level and responsiveness. Self-disclosure level is defined by the extent to which a person tells a partner about his or her intimate feelings, attitudes, experiences (Sprecher & Hendrick, 2004). Responsiveness is defined by the extent to which a person understands, validates, and cares for the partner's (disclosed) needs (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004). Our first hypothesis is that materialistic individuals are less responsive to their partner's needs. Materialistic individuals tend to value selfpromotion over interpersonal bonds (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Li, Lim, Tsai, & O, 2015). As a consequence, materialistic individuals should be less responsive to their partner's needs, given their devaluation of close relationships (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). When a person expects the partner to be unresponsive to one's disclosed needs, he or she is less willing to self-disclose (Lemay & Melville, 2014; Wood & Forest, 2016). Accordingly, our second hypothesis is that, given that materialistic individuals are less responsive (as predicted in the first hypothesis), their partner should disclose less.
4. Overview of the study
⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Hui).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.021 0191-8869/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This study recruited dating couples to engage in videotaped selfdisclosure interactions, so that we could directly assess the contributions of both partners' materialism in a more controlled setting. Furthermore, participants' self-disclosure level and responsiveness during the interactions were rated by themselves, their partner, and trained coders.
C. Hui, O. TsangPersonality and Individual Differences 111 (2017) 174–177
Therefore, we could test the effect of materialism without sole reliance of self-reports. Self-report measures of relationship quality and need fulfillment were also included, in an attempt to replicate the established negative associations between materialism and these variables (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2014). Based on the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM; Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006), we tested if actor's outcome variables could be predicted by actor's materialism (actor effect) and partner's materialism (partner effect). 5. Method 5.1. Participants A power analysis was conducted to determine the minimum number of couples needed to carry APIM analyses (Ackerman, Ledermann, & Kenny, 2016). We assumed that (a) the within-dyad correlations of the independent variable (i.e., materialism) and dependent variables were moderate (all rs = 0.30) and that (b) according to our hypotheses, for each dependent variable, only one actor or partner effect of materialism was present. Based on these assumptions, to detect the actor or partner effect (with a moderate magnitude; β = −0.30), a minimum of 43 couples (n = 86) should be recruited to achieve a power of 0.80. College students were recruited via mass mails and flyers posted in the campus. Forty-seven heterosexual dating couples participated in this study. Two couples were excluded in the analyses, as the self-disclosure exercises were not properly recorded. The final sample consisted of forty-five dating couples (MAge = 20.63, SD = 1.86, range = 18–26), meeting the minimum requirement. The average relationship length was 18.02 months (SD = 17.14; range = 2–77 months).
175
free to be who I am”). Participants rated these items on 7-point scales (1 = not at all to 7 = extremely). 5.3.3. Disclosure level and responsiveness: Self-ratings and partner's ratings Participants then completed two counter-balanced sets of questions related to the self-disclosure exercises. In one set of questions, participants reported their experiences as a discloser. Specifically, they reported their own level of disclosure to their partner on three items constructed for this study (“How much did you tell your partner about yourself?”, “How much did you disclose your private experiences?”, and “How honest were you with your partner?”; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Participants also indicated their partner's responsiveness to their own needs on a 6-item responsiveness scale (e.g., “My partner tried to be sensitive to my feelings”; 1 = not at all to 5 = very much; Canevello & Crocker, 2010). In the other set of questions, participants reported their experiences as a listener. Specifically, they reported their partner's disclosure level and their own responsiveness to their partner's needs. The same scales were used after changes of the targets (e.g., “How much did your partner tell you about himself or herself?”). Therefore, each participant's disclosure level and responsiveness were assessed by both self-rating and partner's rating. 5.3.4. Disclosure level and responsiveness: ratings by coders The videotaped self-disclosure was coded by six trained raters. Three coders rated the participants' disclosure level when they took the role of discloser, whereas the other three rated the participants' responsiveness when they took the role of listener. Again, the same scales were used after changes of the targets (e.g., “How much did the discloser tell his or her partner about himself or herself?”).
5.2. Procedures
5.4. Analytic strategy
One couple was recruited for each session. Upon arrival, the partners were assigned to complete questionnaires in separate cubicles. Each participant was asked to nominate one negative event to be disclosed to the partner later in the study. Specifically, the event to be nominated should occur outside the relationship and make the participant feel either sad, anxious, or afraid of. The couple then engaged in two 10-minute self-disclosure exercises. In the first exercise, one partner was assigned to be a discloser and the other a listener. The discloser then disclosed the event he or she had chosen earlier, whereas the listener freely responded to the discloser's disclosure. In the second exercise, participants switched roles and repeated the exercise. Both exercises were videotaped. Afterward, participants returned to the cubicles and completed the remaining questionnaires.
Given that participants' responses were nested within couples, the statistical dependence was controlled via multilevel analyses with the aid of SPSS Mixed Model (Campbell & Kashy, 2002). As partners of each couple were distinguishable by sex, actor's sex was specified in fixed-effects and random-effects estimates. Based on the APIM (Kenny et al., 2006), we modeled the fixed effects of actor's and partner's materialism (plus actor's sex) simultaneously on actor's outcomes to examine the actor and partner effects of materialism.
5.3. Measures Except for materialism, all measures were administered after the self-disclosure exercises. 5.3.1. Materialism Participants completed an 18-item material values scale (Richins & Dawson, 1992; e.g., “I like a lot of luxury in my life”) on 5-point scales (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). 5.3.2. Relationship quality and need fulfillment Participants completed two scales regarding their perception of relationship quality and need fulfillment within the relationship. Relationship quality was measured by an 18-item perceived relationship quality components inventory (Fletcher, Simpson, & Thomas, 2000; e.g., “How satisfied are you with your relationship?”). Need fulfillment was measured by a 9-item need satisfaction scale (La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000; e.g., “As I am with my partner now, I feel
6. Results Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. Table 2 summarizes the APIM analyses. Each participant's disclosure level and responsiveness were independently rated by the participant, his or her partner, and a group of coders. Past research suggested that the ratings from these three sources are important and yet non-redundant markers (Canevello & Crocker, 2010; Lemay, Clark, & Feeney, 2007). Since we did not have any a priori predictions regarding which of these markers allowed more sensitive tests of our hypotheses, we decided to use the average across the three indices for statistical inferences. The analyses for the separate indices are also presented in the table. Supporting our two hypotheses, analyses showed that, in the selfdisclosure exercises, actor's responsiveness was negatively associated with actor's materialism, whereas actor's disclosure level was negatively associated with partner's materialism. Surprisingly, partner's materialism was also negatively related to actor's responsiveness. These overall results demonstrated the roles of materialism on the self-disclosure process. In addition, replicating the past findings (Dittmar et al., 2014), actor's relationship quality and need fulfillment were negatively related to actor's materialism. Partner's materialism was also negatively related to actor's relationship quality.
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Table 1 Descriptive statistics of the measures. Measures
Materialism Disclosure level Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Responsiveness Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Relationship quality Need fulfillment
α
Male
Female
M
SD
M
SD
Gender difference t
Male-female correlation r
0.78
2.77
0.40
2.76
0.42
0.15
0.39⁎⁎
0.74 0.79 0.74a 0.42
3.93 3.77 3.51 3.74
0.65 0.68 0.62 0.39
4.00 3.88 3.67 3.85
0.56 0.75 0.59 0.48
−0.56 −0.71 −1.52 −1.72†
−0.06 −0.07 0.35⁎ 0.49⁎⁎
0.90 0.92 0.81a 0.56 0.95 0.84
4.35 4.19 3.12 3.89 5.84 5.44
0.51 0.54 0.72 0.46 0.87 0.91
4.22 4.33 3.41 3.99 5.90 5.45
0.51 0.63 0.59 0.41 0.74 0.76
1.18 −1.45 −2.85⁎⁎ −2.04⁎ −0.39 −0.02
0.07 0.45⁎⁎ 0.47⁎⁎ 0.71⁎⁎ 0.35⁎ 0.25†
a
The inter-rater reliability is reported. † p b 0.10. ⁎ p b 0.05. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
Additional multilevel analyses revealed that actor's sex did not moderate the actor effect, | t | s b 1.20, ps N 0.24, and the partner effect, |t|s b 1.35, ps N 0.18, of materialism. The results suggested that the effects of materialism were comparable across actors of different sexes. 7. Discussion This study recruited dating couples to engage in videotaped self-disclosure interactions and measured self-disclosure level and responsiveness by self-reports, partner's reports, and coders' ratings. Using the average scores across these different ratings, the analyses supported our two hypotheses that (a) materialistic individuals are less responsive to the partner's needs and (b) individuals disclose less to a materialistic partner. We also found an unpredicted negative association between actor's responsiveness and partner's materialism. This result may reflect an actor's attempt to reciprocate the unresponsiveness of a materialistic partner (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). There are three major limitations in this study. First, this study was correlational, and hence we could not demonstrate the causal effect of materialism. Second, in this study, it may be tempting to test if selfdisclosure process serves as a mediator between materialism and relationship well-being. However, we could not completely rule out the alternative mediational hypothesis that poor relationship quality mediates the link between materialism and self-disclosure process. As our study design was not set up to test these two competing hypotheses, Table 2 Multilevel analyses: the actor and partner effects of materialism.
Variables Actor's disclosure level Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Actor's responsiveness Rated by actor Rated by partner Rated by coders Average Actor's relationship quality Actor's need fulfillment a
1 = male, 1 = female. † p b 0.10. ⁎ p b 0.05. ⁎⁎ p b 0.01.
Actor's sexa
Actor's materialism
Partner's materialism
β
t
β
t
β
t
0.06 0.08 0.13 0.13
0.57 0.76 1.52 1.81†
−0.09 −0.05 −0.05 −0.07
−0.76 −0.47 −0.52 −0.69
−0.19 −0.36 −0.16 −0.31
−1.68† −3.28⁎⁎ −1.50 −3.23⁎⁎
−0.12 0.12 0.22 0.12 0.03 −0.00
−1.18 1.48 2.82⁎⁎ 2.02⁎
−0.29 −0.19 −0.18 −0.30 −0.30 −0.41
−2.70⁎⁎ −1.99† −1.84† −3.43⁎⁎ −3.16⁎⁎ −4.19⁎⁎
−0.18 −0.35 −0.20 −0.34 −0.27 −0.10
−1.64 −3.67⁎⁎ −2.08⁎ −3.94⁎⁎ −2.79⁎⁎
0.38 −0.03
−1.03
we decided not to conduct any mediational analyses. Finally, turntaking is common in daily self-disclosure (Sprecher, Treger, Wondra, Hilaire, & Wallpe, 2013). Similarly, participants in this study were asked to play both roles of discloser and listener. It seems inevitable that participants' experiences in the earlier role (e.g., disclosing to an unresponsive partner) may incidentally influence their behaviors in the later role (e.g., unresponsive listening). Future studies should minimize such carryover effects. Three future directions are worth pursuing. First, as participants recruited in this study were college students and in a relatively short relationship, future studies should test if the findings are generalizable to older adults and highly committed relationships (e.g., marriage). Second, future studies should continue to explore the roles of materialism on relationship dynamics that demand mutual responsiveness (e.g., conflict resolution; Reis et al., 2004). Second, materialism typically comes from a sense of insecurity (e.g., Chang & Arkin, 2002). Given that materialism is malleable (Kasser, 2016), future research may explore the possibility of reducing materialism via promoting security in close relationships.
8. Conclusion In sum, this study demonstrated the association between materialism and self-disclosure processes. Specifically, using a dyadic design, we found that an actor's exchange in self-disclosure is affected by both the actor's and the partner's materialism. Future research should continue to examine the role of materialism in interpersonal processes.
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