ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a 2017 UK-based priming experiment on the effects of exposure to materialistic media messages (MMMs) on material values, anti-welfare sentiments, and attitude-consistent behavioural intentions (N = 528, ages 18–49 years). First, I define materialism as described in the media-communication and developmental psychology literature. Next, I fuse the main tenets of media cultivation, priming, and framing theories to explain how commercial media cultivate materialistic values and attitudes. I then couple this synthesis with theoretical insights from the psychology literature on dispositional materialism and the neuroscience literature on schema development to formulate hypotheses on the relationships between MMMs and British anti-welfare attitudes. This study’s experimental design and univariate, hierarchical regression, and mediation data-analysis procedures are then detailed. The chapter concludes with a discussion on what the findings contribute to understandings of how commercial media’s cultivation of a neoliberal habitus can potentially undermine prosocial development and societal well-being.
