The Relationship Between Materialistic Values And Academic Engagement In Adolescents: Mediation Of Autonomous Motivation And Academic Emotion

Materialistic values have been indicated to have a negative effect on learning.But we didn’t know how materialistic values are correlated with academic engagement.Using cross-sectional and longitudinal methods,the reported research tested a theoretical model of relationships among materialism,academic autonomous motivation,academic emotion,and academic engagement in adolescents.Study 1 was a cross-sectional study.782 adolescents participated in it.The results showed that:(1)materialistic values significantly negatively predicted academic engagement;(2)academic autonomous motivation played a mediating role in the influence of materialistic values on academic engagement;(3)negative academic emotion mediated the relationship between materialistic values and academic engagement;(4)academic autonomous motivation and positive/negative academic emotion played a serial mediating role in the relationship between materialistic values and academic engagement.Study 2 was a three-wave longitudinal design study.563 adolescents were followed up for three terms.Results showed that:(1)the growth trajectory of adolescents’ materialistic values are linear,which indicated that it increased gradually;(2)materialistic values at Time 1 reduced their academic autonomous motivation at Time 2,leading to decreased academic engagement at Time 3;(3)materialistic values at Time 1increased their negative academic emotion at Time 2,leading to decreased academic engagement at Time 3;(4)T2 academic autonomous motivation and T2 positive academic emotion played a serial mediating role in the relationship between T1 materialistic values and T3 academic engagement.Results of Study 1,2 showed that materialistic values are negatively related with academic engagement.Academic autonomous motivation and academic emotion played a serial mediating role in the relationship between materialistic values and academic engagement.And it indicated that teachers and parents should not encourage students to pursue the materialistic goals of learning.