**4. Discussion**

The present study examined whether and how practicing acts of kindness influences materialism. The study results showed that practicing acts of kindness does not affect materialism, external aspirations, impulsive shopping, and life satisfaction to a greater extent than practicing neutral acts. We found that the women participating in the kindness intervention reported more affiliation values than did the controls (according to H3). However, we found that the intervention recipients, after the intervention and regardless of study condition, exhibited increased life satisfaction and community feeling aspiration and decreased materialism and financial success aspiration. This result suggests that the neutral activity in the control condition—practicing studying-related activities—and practicing kindness had similar effects on the study variables, which does not allow us to reject our hypotheses (H1, H2, and H4) entirely. Finally, we found that kind women focus less on external aspirations and more on internal aspirations. Kindness also predicted a lower intention to shop impulsively three weeks later. Overall, although our study was not conclusive as to whether practicing kindness led to a decrease in materialism, it did indicate that kind women are less oriented toward external materialistic aspirations and more toward internal aspirations, especially those related to maintaining good relationships with other people.

We hypothesized that practicing kindness could increase life satisfaction and affiliative aspirations, which would lead to a decrease in materialism, external aspirations, and a willingness to make an impulsive purchase. On one hand, our study's results did not

directly support these hypotheses. On the other hand, our findings indicated that the practice of kindness is comparable with the practice of neutral acts (such as studying) in increasing life satisfaction and decreasing materialism and financial success aspirations (an example of external aspirations). Indeed, in both conditions after the intervention, a significant increase in life satisfaction (+27%; large effect size), as well as a significant decrease in materialism ( −10%; medium effect size) and financial success aspirations ( −5%; small effect size), when compared to the initial measurement, were observed. The changes mentioned above may be an effect of factors unrelated to the study (e.g., changes in the weather). However, their strength (expressed in effect sizes) and consistent direction sugges<sup>t</sup> that some of these changes were caused by the exercises performed by the participants in both conditions. We designed activities in the kindness and control groups based on the research methodology of Nelson et al. [32], where intervention resulted in a greater increase in well-being in the kindness condition compared to the control. Thus, perhaps engaging in internally motivated activities aimed at increasing personal happiness (the aim of the study as presented to participants), regardless of whether they consist of performing acts of kindness or taking neutral actions (performing activities related to studying), caused an increase in life satisfaction and a decrease in materialism and financial success aspirations. Moreover, a recent study demonstrated that motivating individuals to initiate value-related behavior enhances their well-being [50]. If education was an important value for our study participants, then motivating them to study harder may have contributed to an increase in their happiness. Finally, the intervention we developed differed quantitatively from that used by Nelson et al. [32]. In their study, a six-week intervention was implemented, during which participants were instructed to perform five acts of kindness every seven days (30 in total). We designed a three-week intervention, during which participants had to perform five acts of kindness every three days (20 in total). It may be that the duration of our intervention was too short; thus, the total number of acts of kindness might have been insufficient, or the greater intensity of our intervention influenced the fact that we did not observe an effect of the kindness intervention on life satisfaction.

This explanation suggests that practicing acts of kindness could eventually affect life satisfaction, materialism, and some external aspirations (financial success), but we were unable to statistically demonstrate this effect because the placebo intervention was not a completely neutral activity. This line of reasoning does not allow us to reject our hypotheses entirely, but it suggests that practicing kindness is no different from any other activity aimed at increasing personal well-being. Thus, practicing acts of kindness is likely to have the properties to increase public health by increasing life satisfaction and decreasing materialism. Future studies should examine this possibility by designing other types of neutral activities in control conditions. This is important because as research extends our knowledge about the relationship between kindness and materialism, practitioners become better equipped to help people reduce their materialism and improve the satisfaction of their lives.

Although, in general, the kindness intervention did not lead to changes in external aspirations, significant changes were observed in one of the six types of aspirations examined: we found a small effect size of practicing kindness on affiliation aspirations. As expected, participants practicing kindness showed an increase in aspirations focused on affiliation, i.e., an improvement in loving and caring for others [24]. Performing almost 20 acts of kindness within three weeks increased the importance of the aspiration of having satisfactory relations with friends and family. This relationship is consistent with our hypotheses. Following the assumptions that the realization of intrinsic aspirations (which are affiliative aspirations) leads to an increase in life satisfaction [1,8,17,19] and that an increase in life satisfaction, in turn, leads to a decrease in materialism [11,12], it can still be expected that the practicing of kindness will lead to a decrease in materialism.

Our correlational analyses of kindness as a trait measured at the pretest also confirmed this line of reasoning. We found that kindness (measured at the pretest) correlated negatively with materialism and the intention to engage in impulsive shopping (measured at

the post-test). These relationships expand prior findings showing that the current level of kindness may be related to intentions to engage in impulsive shopping. From another perspective, these findings show that kinder women are less inclined toward materialistic behaviors, such as impulsively buying unnecessary items. We also found that kind women focus less on external aspirations and more on internal aspirations. The directions of the relationship with these types of aspirations are in line with our SDT-based assumptions. Being kind to other people represents an intrinsic aspiration from the SDT perspective, as confirmed by our results showing positive relationships between kindness and other intrinsic aspirations. Furthermore, kind women are less oriented toward external aspirations that do not lead to happiness. Since we have shown that there is negative correlation between kindness traits and materialism and assuming that materialism can be described in terms of the strength of extrinsic aspirations relative to intrinsic aspirations [18,24], our results sugges<sup>t</sup> that kind women have fewer materialistic aspirations and values.

Since kindness interventions did not affect materialism, but kindness traits were negatively related to materialistic aspirations and values, it is possible that materialism influences kindness, but not vice versa. In line with this interpretation, a greater focus on material values may lead to a decrease in kindness toward others. Conversely, being kind to other people may not lead to a reduced focus on material things. Future research using experimental or longitudinal methodology may aim to clarify the direction of the interaction between materialism and kindness.

Despite the inconclusive results, our study was the first to test whether practicing kindness leads to a decrease in materialism and to support this hypothesis. Our line of hypotheses is supported by (1) a decrease in materialism and financial success–oriented aspirations following the use of the kindness and control interventions; (2) a significant increase in affiliation aspirations following the kindness intervention; and (3) a positive association of the trait of kindness with intrinsic aspirations and a negative association of the trait of kindness with extrinsic aspirations and with the intention to make an impulsive purchase. Thus, beyond calling for further research to test the effects of practicing kindness on materialism, initial practical recommendations can be initiated. In the modern world, many people struggle with their materialistic desires, which leads not only to a decrease in their well-being [1,3] but also to a deterioration of their social relationships [13,16,17,28], and therefore poses a threat to public health [22]. Moreover, materialistic attitudes toward buying lead to the overconsumption of goods and services, which contributes to the destruction of the environment [51]. Therefore, practitioners, especially mental health therapists, need techniques to decrease materialism. Kindness interventions, although not proven effective at this point, are a promising tool for practitioners to reduce materialism. They can be another piece in the effort to reduce the materialism of individuals for the growth of personal and social well-being and even for the improvement of public health and environmental protection.
