Abstract:  Materialism refers to a personal value stressing the importance of owning material possessions for life. Most of previous literature focused on studying its negative effects, but this view has been increasingly challenged. The current empirical studies demonstrated that materialism could promote happiness under certain conditions, and could be used as a compensation strategy for personal sense of insecurity. From the motivation perspective some researchers pointed out that conceptually instrumental materialism could be benign, and materialism could be considered as identity goal pursuit for self-identity construction and maintenance as well. Future research may provide more empirical evidence for the motivation-based concepts of materialism, and evaluate the effectiveness of materialism for insecurity compensation and happiness promotion. Another direction for future research would be investigating the positive impact of materialism on well-being from an integration perspective of cognition and motivation.

Key words: materialism, happiness, insecurity, instrumental-terminal materialism, identity goal pursuits