Material Self

• “Diderot Effect” is one of the most commonly experienced phenomena of consumption out there has once already taken hold of the people.
• William James (1842-1910), an individual’s selfhood can be broken down into several fragments, with the material self being one

   
•  Curtis (2017) manifested that cash can have serious bearing on one’s belief regarding the way a person views him/herself.
• Heyman and Ariely (2004) stated that there are two motivations for completing a task
• First is social. By seeing a task’s social value, a person sees it as a worthy investment of time and is usually happy to help out.
• When money is offered as the motivation, people then start thinking less of the social aspect and more about the business value.
• Self-sufficiency and Service

    - Those who are conscious of money typically strive to be more self-sufficient than those for whom money isn’t a priority.
• Self-view

  • The amount one earns could have an effect on how he/she views the self and others. The wealthiest people are those with the deepest sense of class essentialism-the idea that differences between classes are based upon identity and genetics rather than circumstance
• Ethics

  ● Those who perceive themselves to be in a higher class were most likely to engage in unethical behavior, particularly when a symbol of wealth was introduced such as cutting off a pedestrian when in a luxury car.
• Piff, 2012 in his study labelled the behavior, “self-interest maximization” an idea that suggests those who have the most money or occupy higher classes are more like to have a “what’s in it for me?” attitude
• Addiction

  ● This is called “behavioral or process addiction” a compulsive behavior not motivated by dependency on an addictive substance, but rather by a process that leads to a seemingly positive outcome. 
• If possessions are viewed as part of self, it follows that an unintentional loss of possessions, should be regarded as a loss or lessening of self. 
• Goffman (1961) provides a thorough review of the evidence of deliberate lessening of self-manifested in such institutions such as: mental hospitals, home for the aged, military training camps, boarding schools among others.
• This is what William James, in the face of material loss, considers the “shrinkage of the personality” (1890)
• The income earned determines the level of consumption. 
• Collection

  • A compulsive tendency urges them the increasing desire to collect as much as they could which gives them a greater feeling of security and therefore becoming a basis of the sense
• Pets are regarded commonly as representative of self and studies show that we attempt to infer characteristics of people from their friends (Foote 1956; Heiman 1967). Others have observed that, like people, pets are regarded as family members (Cain 1985; Friedmann and Thomas, 1985; Hickrod and Schmitt 1982).
• Body parts

  • among the most central parts of the extended self. 
• Csikszentmilhalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) proposed the seemingly identical concept of psychic energy investment to describe the process of identification with possessions of any type.
•  Five Stages in Philip Kotler’s (1980) Buyer Decision Process:
• 1. Information Search

  • buyers begin to look around to find out what’s out there in terms of choice
• Evaluation of Alternatives

  • sees the evaluation of the available alternatives; the buyer then decides upon a set of criteria by which to assess each alternative
• 1. Purchase Decision

  buyer makes the final choice of what to buy and from whom to buy it
• MATERIAL SELF refers to all of the physical elements that reflect who a person is which includes one’s body, possessions and home
• Materialism refers to the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter, its movements and its modifications; the theory or belief that consciousness and will are wholly due to material agency; a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values.