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1. Introduction
Ethical concerns about the harmful effects of advertising on children have existed for a long time. In a seminal review, Pollay (1986) discussed the works of various significant humanities and social science scholars who claimed that advertising provides a distorted mirror. Advertising is believed to foster materialism by promoting goods and objects and to create dissatisfaction by idealizing “the goods life” (Pollay and Gallagher, 1990). Research has indeed confirmed that being frequently exposed to advertising increases children’s materialism (Opree et al., 2014). Furthermore, advertising decreases children’s life satisfaction through the disappointment following parental denial of purchase requests (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2003a, 2003b). Although these findings make it tempting to conclude that advertising jeopardizes children’s “good life”, we cannot do so without studying its effect on children’s wellbeing to the full extent first (Kunkel and Roberts, 1991).
There are two paradigms in wellbeing research (Ryan and Deci, 2001). The first and most popular is the hedonic paradigm, which pertains to the current state of happiness. This paradigm involves research into people’s subjective wellbeing, more particularly, their moods and life satisfaction. The second paradigm is the eudaimonic paradigm. This paradigm involves research into people’s psychological wellbeing, more particularly the cultivation of personal strengths and ability to reach one’s potential (Ryan and Deci, 2001). Psychological wellbeing consists of six dimensions: environmental mastery, personal growth, purpose in life, self-acceptance, autonomy and positive relationships with others (Ryff, 1989). According to Self-Determination Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000, 2001; Waterman, 2008), these dimensions reflect the preconditions that need to be met for a person to be able to experience happiness. As such, psychological wellbeing precedes and predicts life satisfaction. This notion is observed among all ages, both in the context of school (Niemiec and Ryan, 2009) and work (Vansteenkiste et al., 2007).
To gain a thorough understanding of the relation between children’s advertising exposure and wellbeing, this study will combine both theoretical perspectives. It is exploratory in nature because it is the very first to study the effect of advertising on psychological wellbeing. No such study has been conducted previously – among children nor adults. The aim of this study is threefold. First, we aim to verify whether children’s advertising exposure has a negative effect on life satisfaction....