Abstract: Our contemporary culture places high value on wealth, which negatively influences the cognitions, emotions and behavior of our youth. Contemporary theorists have termed this wealth contagion as 'Affluenza' which changes the fabric of the society and negatively affects the developmental outcomes throughout individual’s life and poses serious threats to young adults. The present research has empirically explored how affluent and non-affluent differ on different dimensions of Narcissism. The data of 100 affluent & 100 non-affluent students identified with Mattison Affluenza Scale (2012), in the age range of 18-24 yrs., were collected from different colleges and universities of Punjab & Chandigarh. The narcissistic tendencies were assessed on seven dimensions of Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Raskin & Terry, 1988). It was hypothesized that affluent individuals would be high on narcissism as compared to their non-affluent counterparts. Unpaired t-test revealed that affluent and non-affluent differed significantly (t=24.17**) on narcissism. The global score on narcissism of affluent participants (M=32.04) came out much higher in comparison to global score of non-affluent participants (M=16.74). The findings are line with previous researches reporting that high level of affluence may play a significant role in narcissistic tendencies in youth due to their increases sense of entitlement and heightened feelings of uniqueness and individualism (Emmons, 1984; Raskin & Terry, 1988; Twenge et al., 2008).
Keywords: Affluenza, Non-Affluent, Narcissism, Unpaired t-test.
Title: The Ripple Effect: Wealth Contagion and Its Influence on Behavior
Author: Dr. Mamta Sharma
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations
ISSN 2348-1218 (print), ISSN 2348-1226 (online)
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