In a research article (Busseri & Sadava, 2011), researchers identified five different conceptualizations of subjective well-being and suggested that inconsistencies in conceptualization between studies have led to inconclusive findings. For the purpose of our investigation, we focus on explaining and examining two of these conceptualizations. In the first conceptualization, subjective well-being is treated as a construct with three different, separate components: life satisfaction, positive and negative affect. Research within this conceptualization has focused on understanding the unique and common predictors of each of the three components. It is assumed that it is important to assess each of three components separately to provide an accurate description of subjective well-being and to examine the common and unique predictors of each component (Busseri, 2018).

In the second conceptualization, subjective well-being is treated as a higher order factor, reflected in three first-order factors: life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect, suggesting a hierarchical structure. This model proposes that a higher order factor, subjective well-being, is responsible for the associations between life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect. Research within this conceptualization has found empirical support for the presence of a higher order factor with strong factor loadings from the first-order factors (Busseri & Sadava, 2011). For the sake of clarity, we use the term overall sense of subjective well-being to refer to this higher order factor.

Busseri and Sadava (2011) make several suggestions for future research, which include choosing and justifying the use of any of the different conceptualizations of subjective well-being, examining predictors of subjective well-being under different conceptualizations, and comparing and contrasting results obtained from different conceptualization within the same investigation. We seek to answer this call by examining the influence of gratitude and materialism on subjective well-being under two conceptualizations: subjective well-being as a construct with three different, separate components and subjective well-being as a higher order factor, reflected in three first-order factors. Comparing and contrasting the influence of predictors under two different conceptualizations would allow us to establish if any of the two predictors have unique relations with any of the three separate components of subjective well-being, independent of the higher order subjective well-being factor (Busseri & Sadava, 2011). Now, we turn of attention to the role of materialism as a predictor of subjective well-being.

Materialism is conceptualized as a value that reflects the belief that possessions are important in one’s life (Richins, 2004). The importance of material values lies in that individual differences in the endorsement materialism are expected to lead to different cognitive, affective and behavioral outcomes (Kasser, 2016), including subjective well-being. Thus, materialism has been proposed as a predictor of subjective well-being.

Across different investigations, materialism seems to exert a negative effect on subjective well-being (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002). However, in our opinion, many of these investigations have had the limitation that subjective well-being has not been conceptualized consistently (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002). That is, some investigations have focused mainly on assessing the impact of materialism on judgments of general and domain specific satisfaction, paying less attention to the influence of materialism on positive and negative affect. Similarly, to our knowledge, not a single study has examined the influence of materialism on subjective well-being under the hierarchical conceptualization of the construct. Thus, the present investigation tries to overcome some of these limitations by testing the effect of materialism on each of the three separate components of subjective well-being and on the second order factor of overall sense of subjective well-being, controlling for the known effects of extraversion and neuroticism. Polak and McCulough (2006) suggested that gratitude might be an alternative to materialism since it should have the opposite effect on subjective well-being, with important implications for different research areas including social psychology and consumer behavior (Bridger & Wood, 2017). What follows is an explanation of how gratitude might be related to subjective well-being.

Gratitude is conceptualized as an emotion and a life orientation in which individuals appreciate and notice positive aspects in their lives (Sirois & Wood, 2017; Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). Gratitude emerges when one recognizes another agent as a source of one’s positive aspects in life. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions suggests that positive emotions such as gratitude broaden thought repertories and build personal resources (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2018). When one is grateful, then, there is a tendency to broaden one’s mindset and acknowledge, among other aspects, the role of important others in life. Similarly, gratitude also helps build durable resources for well-being such as intrinsic motivation and purposefulness (Bono & Odudu, 2016).

Given the beneficial consequences of gratitude and the fact that it is an orientation toward appreciating and noticing the positive aspects of life, it has been hypothesized to be related to variables reflecting this positive outlook such as well-being (Puente-Díaz & Meixueiro, 2016; Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010) and prosociality (Ma, Tunney, & Ferguson, 2017). A recent review of the relationship between well-being and gratitude supports this conclusion (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). However, many of the reviewed investigations have limitations. Specifically, there has been inconsistency in the conceptualization of well-being. Whereas some investigations have used positive affect as a proxy of well-being (Froh & Kashdan, Ozimkowski, & Miller, 2009), others have used life satisfaction (Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2008). Similarly, to our knowledge, not a single study has examined the influence of gratitude on subjective well-being under the hierarchical conceptualization of the construct. The observed inconsistencies in the examination of the effects of gratitude on subjective well-being might since gratitude is still one of the most understudied emotions (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). We want to address these limitations by assessing the influence of gratitude on each of three components of subjective well-being and on the second order factor, overall sense of subjective well-being, while controlling for the known effects of extraversion and neuroticism among participants from Mexico (Wood, Joseph, & Maltby, 2008).

In sum, the purpose of the present investigation is to compare and contrast the influence of gratitude and materialism on subjective well-being under two different conceptualizations: 1) subjective well-being treated as a construct with three different, separate components: life satisfaction, positive and negative affect and 2) subjective well-being treated as a higher order factor, reflected in three first-order factors: life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. The following six hypotheses are formulated:

Materialism would have a negative effect on positive affect and life satisfaction.

Participants were 386 (247 females and 139 males) college students from two private universities in Mexico City and Puebla. The mean age was 22.47 (SD = 2.45). Students received extra credit for their participation.

Participants completed the questionnaires in small groups of two or three. The questionnaires took between 15 to 20 minutes to complete. All participants were thanked and debriefed after their participation. The present investigation obtained the approval from the institutional human subjects committee.

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). The SWLS is a five-item questionnaire designed to measure satisfaction with life. The questionnaire uses a Likert-type scale and total scores range from 5 to 35. The scale showed adequate psychometric properties for scientific research (e.g., significant loadings and a coefficient of internal consistency of 0.84).

The Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE) (Diener et al., 2009). The SPANE is a twelve-item questionnaire that includes six items to assess positive feelings and six items to assess negative feelings. Each item is scored on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 represents “very rarely or never” and 5 represents “very often or always.” The positive and negative scales are scored separately. The scale showed adequate psychometric properties for scientific research (e.g., significant loadings and coefficients of internal consistency above 0.67).

The Material Value Scale (MVS) (Richins, 2004). We used the abbreviated nine- item measure of materialistic values. Each item is scored on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 represents “strongly disagree” and 5 represents “strongly agree.” The scale possesses good psychometric properties, especially when it is used to measure materialism at the general level. The scale has shown adequate psychometric properties for scientific research in previous studies (e.g., significant loadings and a coefficient of internal consistency of 0.78) (Puente-Díaz & Cavazos-Arroyo, 2017).

Big Five Inventory (BFI) (Benet-Martínez & John, 1998). This measure uses 44 short phrases to assess extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Respondents rated each of the 44 short phrases on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly). For the purpose of this study, we used an abbreviated scale, four items for each variable, to measure extraversion and neuroticism. Abbreviated measures have been used previously with similar samples (Puente-Díaz & Cavazos, 2013). The scale showed adequate psychometric properties for scientific research (e.g., significant loadings and coefficients of internal consistency above 0.67).

The Gratitude Scale (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002). This questionnaire contains six items measuring trait gratitude. Items were designed to assess emotional intensity, frequency, and density. Items are rated on a 1 (‘‘strongly disagree’’) to 7 (‘‘strongly agree’’) scale. The scale showed adequate psychometric properties for scientific research (e.g., significant loadings and a coefficient of internal consistency of 0.74).

For the sake of clarity, we organized the results by conceptualization of subjective well-being. In the first conceptualization, labeled as model I, subjective well-being is treated as a construct with three separate components. In the second conceptualization, labeled as model II, subjective well-being is treated as second order factor with three first order factors. For both conceptualizations, structural equation models were estimated. We used LISREL 9.1 to conduct all our analyses. We report the χ², Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), and the Incremental Fit Index (IFI) for each of the analysis conducted. We used the cutoff scores of RMSEA < 0.08 and IFI > 0.90 as the minimum acceptable levels of model fit.

The purpose of the present investigation was to compare and contrast the influence of gratitude and materialism on subjective well-being under two different conceptualizations: 1) subjective well-being treated as a construct with three different, separate components: life satisfaction, positive and negative affect and 2) subjective well-being treated as a higher order factor, reflected in three first-order factors: life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. We tested six hypotheses and found support for five of them.

As mentioned earlier, subjective well-being has been widely examined (Lucas & Diener, 2008). However, the rapid growth of knowledge generation has not come without its problems. Several investigations have not conceptualized and operationalized subjective well-being consistently (Busseri, 2015; Busseri & Sadava, 2011). Inconsistencies in the conceptualization of a construct cause significant problems when one attempts to summarize results from different investigations or when one desires to make conclusions about the influence of a specific predictor on a certain variable. For example, when examining the influence of gratitude on subjective well-being, one does not know if researchers are examining the influence of gratitude on each of three components of the construct, positive and negative affect and life satisfaction, within the same model (Froh, Yurkewicz, & Kashdan, 2009) or only examining the influence of gratitude on life satisfaction (Puente-Díaz & Meixueiro, 2016). Similarly, in a recent literature review, 12 studies examining the influence of gratitude on subjective well-being were identified. Yet, only 4 included all three components of subjective well-being and not a single investigation examined the influence of gratitude on the higher order subjective well-being factor (Wood, Froh, & Geraghty, 2010). The literature on materialism and subjective well-being shows a similar picture (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002). Thus, we tried to make a small contribution by conceptualizing and operationalizing subjective well-being consistently and in two different forms in order to examine the influence of materialism and gratitude.

Our results showed that gratitude had a positive effect on positive affect, life satisfaction and overall sense of subjective well-being but a null direct effect on negative affect. Even though the null effect of gratitude on negative affect might come as a surprise, some investigations have found similar results. For example, investigations using experimental (Grant & Gino, 2010) and correlational designs (Froh, Yurkewicz, & Kashdan, 2009) have found null effects and non-significant correlations between gratitude and negative affect. Interestingly, however, gratitude had a significant indirect effect, through overall sense of subjective well-being, on negative affect. We might conclude, then, that gratitude influences one’s overall sense of subjective well-being, which indirectly results in lower levels of negative affect. The beneficial effect of gratitude on subjective well-being might be because gratitude strengthens the development of socials ties (Ma, Tunney, & Ferguson, 2017) and strong social relationships are a robust predictor of subjective well-being (David, Boniwell, & Conley-Ayers, 2014).

Our investigation also showed that materialism had a negative effect on positive affect, life satisfaction and overall sense of subjective well-being and a positive effect on negative affect. Thus, under both conceptualizations of subjective well-being, materialism was a significant predictor. These results are consistent with other investigations in which the influence of materialism on one or several components of subjective well-being was examined (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Ku, 2015). To our knowledge, however, the influence of materialism on overall sense of well-being, the hierarchical conceptualization, had not been examined before. We now can conclude that materialism has a significant influence on the three independent components of subjective well-being and on the overall sense of subjective well-being. The negative consequences of holding material values on subjective well-being might come from findings suggesting that the desire to have material possessions is related to poor quality of social relations and low levels of social acceptance (Kasser, 2016). As mentioned earlier, social relationships are a strong predictor of subjective well-being (David, Boniwell, & Conley-Ayers, 2014).

Our investigation had several limitations. First, we used a correlational design, which does not allow us to establish causality or directionality. Previous research (Polak & McCullough, 2006) suggests that materialism and gratitude “lead” to lower/higher levels of subjective well-being, yet our investigation cannot establish this. A second limitation is that we used a sample of convenience from two private universities. College students from a private university do not represent well the general population of Mexico. Mexico is a country where income inequalities are considerable. Thus, future research should assess whether materialism and gratitude have the same negative and positive influence, respectively, on subjective well-being among members from lower socioeconomic status. Our guess is that they do, yet this conclusion needs empirical scrutiny.