Family Socioeconomic Status and Materialistic Values in Adolescence: The Moderation of The Classroom Context of Belief in a Just World

Zhang Yaohua; Huang Yunyun; Chang Song; Xu Min; Xin Sufei

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240512

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (5) : 1136-1144. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240512

Family Socioeconomic Status and Materialistic Values in Adolescence: The Moderation of The Classroom Context of Belief in a Just World

Zhang Yaohua, Huang Yunyun, Chang Song, Xu Min, Xin Sufei

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Abstract

Materialistic values have negative effects on the development of psychosocial functioning in adolescents. According to the dual path model, the relationship between family socioeconomic status and materialistic values is ambiguous. On the one hand, socialization agents may transmit the values and norms to adolescents from higher family socioeconomic status, which then increase their tendency toward materialism. On the other hand, resources and privileges shared by higher family socioeconomic status serve as psychological capacity to defend the young family members against the materialism. The dual path model derives two contradictory hypotheses, and the empirical evidence on this topic also shows mixed results. These theoretical hypotheses and empirical findings suggest that there are other mechanisms underlying the relation between family socioeconomic status and materialistic values.
Belief in a just world is a personal psychosocial resource that can serve as a coping function and provide a framework of meaning for individuals. Therefore, it is possible that beliefs in a just world may moderate the relation between socioeconomic status and materialistic values. More importantly, adolescents live in a class group. The average classroom beliefs in a just world may have a positive contextual effect to help adolescent students deal with threats and uncertainty, then reduce materialistic value orientation, especially for the students from higher family socioeconomic status. This is because these students have more opportunities to be exposed to the materialistic environments.
To investigate the class-level contextual effect of belief in a just world on materialistic values, cross-sectional data were collected via paper-and-pencil questionnaires, with 3763 adolescents (Mage = 13.95, SD = 1.49, 52.22% girls) nested within 103 class from eight junior and senior middle schools. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires. The questionnaires consisted of three parts, including family socioeconomic status, material values scale, general belief in a just world. Data was cleansed and analyzed with SPSS 26.0, and the main model estimations were based on R software. The multilevel confirmatory factor analysis was based on lavaan package, and the multilevel linear mixed model analysis was based on lme4 package.
The results suggested that student-level belief in a just world had a negative relationship with materialistic values; class-level beliefs in a just world further showed extra negative relationship with materialistic values beyond the effect of individual beliefs in a just world and exhibited an incremental predictive validity, which is known as contextual effects. The results also demonstrated that there was a heterogeneous relation between family socioeconomic status and materialistic values. Class-level belief in a just world could serve as a contextual moderator. Specifically, there was no significant association between individual-level beliefs in a just world, socioeconomic status and materialistic values among individuals who were exposed to higher levels of class aggregate belief in a just world. However, among individuals who were exposed to lower levels of class aggregate belief in a just world, those who held lower belief in a just world orientated more materialistic values with the increase of family socioeconomic status. On the other hand, the individuals with higher beliefs in a just world showed no significant relationship between their materialism and family socioeconomic status.
To conclude, belief in a just world both at the student and class levels have beneficial effects on adolescents' developmental outcomes. The aggregate level of belief in a just world can uniquely decrease the level of students' materialistic values and can buffer the negative impacts of higher family socioeconomic status and lower individual level belief in a just world. The current study extends the dual path model of materialism development. Socialization agents and psychosocial resources may interact with each other to influence the development and maintenance of materialism. The findings also emphasize the role of the niche context in which the climate of the group's belief system influences the development of its members.

Key words

belief in a just world / materialistic value / family socioeconomic status / adolescence / contextual effect

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Zhang Yaohua, Huang Yunyun, Chang Song, Xu Min, Xin Sufei. Family Socioeconomic Status and Materialistic Values in Adolescence: The Moderation of The Classroom Context of Belief in a Just World[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(5): 1136-1144 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240512

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