Author: Hnilica, K.
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The study is based on two theories. Ac-cording to the first, values form a coherent system with an internal dynamics. Accord-ing to the second, materialist values have a negative effect on the quality of life: the more materialistic individuals are, the less they are satisfied with their lives. One result of the two theories is that the negative effect of materialist values on satisfaction with life will be moderated by the other values. For this study we derived two hypotheses from this result. The first is that a negative effect will be discovered in situations of conflict of values, i.e. situations in which individuals assign important places both to materialist values and to values from the opposite area of universalist values in their personal hierarchy of values. Individuals with a conflict of values should theoretically prove less satisfied than other materialist individuals. The second hypothesis suggests that the influence of materialist value orientation on satisfaction with life will be moderated by all the other values. We operationalised the importance of the other values by their projection onto individualism-collectivism and material-ism-p o stmaterialism dimensions. In prin-ciple we expected that the more individuals were post-materialist and individualist, the more they would be satisfied with their life. Academic high-school pupils and university students tookpart in the research (N = 215). The results confirmed the negative relationship between materialist value orientation and satisfaction with life, but it did not con-firm the hypothesis of the negative effect of conflict of values: individuals with conflict-ing values were not less satisfied with their lives than the other materialist individuals. In accordance with the second hypothesis it turned out that the more individuals are post-materialists, they more they are (on average) satisfied with their lives. It was also confirmed that the effect of materialist and universalist values on satisfaction of life is moderated by this dimension. The effect of individualism was in the anticipated direction, but was not statistically significant.
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