Mediating Effect Of Sence Of Control Between Materialism And Wellbeing

China’s economy has developed rapidly in recent years, and the people’s living standards have improved, so that this change provides a breeding ground for the rise of materialism. On the other hand, with social development and economic growth people began to pay more attention to their own well-being. Therefore, the rise of materialism and the attention to wellbing are both the concern of the people in China naw. Western researchers have already begun the research about the relationship of materialism and well-being, and they found that materialism and well-being are negatively correlated overall. Now they have begun to explore the internal relations, and found that many factors play the role of mediator between materialism and wellbeing. These studies help us to understand the impact of materialism on our lives, help people to improve the level of wellbeing, understanding the characteristics of human mental activity. Compared with the West, though the materialism intensifies in China, there are not many studies about materialism, and there are less studies about the relations between materialism and wellbeing, then the studies of the internal relations are very few. This situation dose not match the demand of these studies in China. On the other hand, though the Western studies have found some relations between materialism and wellbing, we are not sure that the results match China for the huge cultural differences between East and West:the West is a western-style democratic society, the culture promote individualism, and the mainstream culture is the Christian religious culture; while the culture of China advocates collectivism,and most Chinese have no religious faith. In recent years,there are many exchanges between cultures, but the long-term differences are deep-rooted, so the findings about the West is difficult to directly apply to the Chinese society, and we have to investigate the relations between materialism and wellbeing in the Chinese population. In view of that foreign scholars have found that the sense of control plays the role of mediator between materialism and affect wellbeing, this study will validate and further expand this research in order to obtain the early information about materialism and wellbing in the Chinese population. We also want to investigate the mediating mechanism in the hope of contributing to the improving of national wellbing and correcting the national values.This study is divided into two studies. Study 1 is a correlation research, we will distribute questionaires to survey the scores of materialism, wellbeing and sence of control.The tools study 1 use are as follows:the investigation of the materialism using Richins and Dawson 18-items materialism scale (Richins & Dawson,1992);the investigation of wellbiing using Watson (1988) positive and Negative Affect Scale to measure emotion welllbeing and Diener’s five-item life satisfaction scale to measure life satisfaction;and the investigation of the sence of control using Levenson’s Locus of Control Scale. Then we use correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to explore the correlation between each variables and the mediating effect of sense of control. The results of study 1 show that there is a negative correlation between materialism and wellbing in the Chinese population,and when we controlled the sense of control statistically, the relation between materialism and well-being have been reduced significantly.In Sudy 1, the social expectations had not been controlled.But as a kind of values, materialism dosen’t been praised in the Chinese traditional culture, so the participants may give us the false answers. And the studies have found that western questionnaires to control desirable responding are not suitable for Chinese, therefore study 2 use Implicit attitude Test(IAT) to measure materialism. We use E-prime to write IAT program to measure materialism. Watson (1988) positive and Negative Affect Scale and Diener’s five item life satisfaction scale are used to measure wellbing. And Levenson 24 items Locus of Control Scale is used to measure the sence of control. Then we use correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to explore the correlation between each variables and the mediating effect of sense of control. The results of Study 2 also shows that there is a negative correlation between materialism and wellbing, and when we controlled the sense of control statistically, the relation between materialism and emotional well-being and life satisfaction have been reduced significantly.