Midterm Lesson 3

THE MATERIAL/ECONOMIC SELF

Lesson Outline:

1. What do our possessions mean? We treat our possessions as extension of ourselves.

i. Defining ourselves by our possessions can contribute to feelings of well – being as well as
feelings of emptiness and vulnerability.
ii. To the highly materialistic person, purchases of consumer goods offer the potential for magical
transformation of self. (Materialism: “the importance a consumer attaches to worldly
possessions.”)
iii. Objects in our possession can literally extend self, as when a tool or weapon allows us to do
things of which we would otherwise be incapable.
iv. Possessions can also symbolically extend self, as when a uniform or trophy allows us to
convince ourselves (and perhaps others) that we can be a different person than we would be
without them.
v. Such objects act as reminders and confirmers of our identity
― Where men tend to value possessions for self-focused and instrumental reasons, women
tend to emphasize expressive and other-oriented reasons for feeling attachment to
possessions
― As we age the possessions we cite as "special" tend increasingly to be those that
symbolize other people (e.g., gifts from people, photographs of people).
― Adolescents at this stage increasingly seek identity through acquiring and accumulating
selected consumption objects.
vi. Emphasis on material possessions tends to decrease with age, but remains high throughout
life as we seek to express ourselves through possessions and use material possessions to
seek happiness, remind ourselves of experiences, accomplishments, and other people in our
lives, and even create a sense of life after death.
vii. Our accumulation of possessions provides a sense of past and tells us who we are, where we
have come from, and perhaps where we are going.

2. Why do we buy?
Springboard: Ask students what they will buy if given P1000.
i. Biological: reward pathways in the brain
ii. Psychological:
― Freud: We are pleasure-seeking animals
― Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
― Conditioning (through advertisements/commercials and rewards)