THE EARLY CODING OF WORTH: MATERIALISM BEFORE CHOICE

liviupoenaru
il y a 2 jours
3 min de lecture

Dec. 20, 2025

New interdisciplinary research confirms a troubling but clinically coherent reality: beliefs about success, money, and self-worth are not later cognitive distortions — they are installed early, quietly, before children have language for value. A landmark experimental study in Scientific Reports demonstrates that even preschoolers can associate possessions with happiness and social success, revealing that materialism is not a cultural accident but an early symbolic adaptation. What looks like innocent desire (“more toys”) often conceals a deeper psychic equation: having equals being.

The study differentiates between a developmentally normal “more is better” tendency and a more structural form of materialism, in which objects function as markers of happiness, status, and social recognition. Some four- and five-year-olds already show this second pattern. This matters because decades of research consistently link materialism to lower life satisfaction, increased anxiety, and emotional fragility. From a mental-health perspective, materialism is not neutral — it is epidemiologically predictive.

At the center of this dynamic lies self-esteem. Prior research in adolescents and adults shows that materialism operates as a compensatory mechanism: when individuals feel insecure, socially devalued, or invisible, objects become tools for signaling worth. The experimental contribution of Trzcińska and colleagues is to demonstrate that this mechanism is already active in early childhood. Low perceived competence or weak social belonging appears sufficient to trigger material valuation long before conscious ideology or market literacy exists. Materialism here is not greed; it is psychic repair.

To test this hypothesis, researchers experimentally increased preschoolers’ self-esteem through brief interventions targeting perceived competence and social acceptance. Children exposed to these self-esteem boosts subsequently placed less importance on material goods, valuing people and experiences over possessions. This finding quietly subverts neoliberal assumptions that consumption is innate or inevitable. Instead, it shows that material desire is plastic, relational, and contingent on early feedback environments.

The study introduces a decisive cognitive moderator: Theory of Mind (ToM). Preschoolers with more advanced ToM — those better able to understand others’ perspectives and engage in social comparison — displayed higher materialism when self-esteem was low. This is a critical inversion of dominant narratives about cognition. Cognitive sophistication does not protect against materialism; when paired with insecurity, it amplifies it. The capacity to compare oneself to others transforms objects into competitive symbols, embedding social pressure directly into the child’s value system.

The broader implication is civilizational. In a digital environment saturated with metrics, visibility, and commodified recognition, these early mechanisms are likely being accelerated. If self-worth continues to be externally indexed — by performance, visibility, and possession — anxiety will remain structurally produced. The mental forecast is clear: strengthening self-esteem, fostering intrinsic goals, and prioritizing belonging over performance in early life may function as public-mental-health interventions. If children learn that worth is relational rather than material, the cycle linking consumer culture, insecurity, and psychological distress can be interrupted — before it becomes destiny.

References

Trzcińska, A., Podsiadłowski, W., Wieleszczyk, J., Oleszkiewicz, A., & Wichary, S. (2025). The role of theory of mind in how increasing preschoolers’ self-esteem affects their materialism: An experimental study. Scientific Reports, 15, 42619. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-26801-8

Dittmar, H., Bond, R., Hurst, M., & Kasser, T. (2014). The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(5), 879–924. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037409

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 410–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.2.410