Contentment (Financial) (CON)

1. Abstract

The Contentment (Financial) (CON) subscale, originally conceptualized as the “Money-Luxury” candidate psychological need subscale by Kennon M. Sheldon, Andrew J. Elliot, Youngmee Kim, and Tim Kasser (2001), is a brief, psychometrically validated three-item self-report instrument. It is designed to operationalize the degree to which an individual experiences perceived material abundance, financial security, and satisfaction of acquisition desires in connection with salient life events or general psychological functioning. Developed within a landmark empirical investigation that tested ten candidate human psychological needs against criteria derived from Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and humanistic psychology, the instrument measures subjective financial adequacy rather than objective socioeconomic indicators such as gross income or liquid net worth.

The scale employs a 5-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). Across diverse experimental, cross-sectional, and cross-cultural samples (including collegiate cohorts in the United States and South Korea), the financial contentment subscale demonstrated robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging between α = .70 and .89 across event-level and trait-level assessments. Psychometric evaluations utilizing exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have consistently supported its unidimensional structural validity as an extrinsic motivator that diverges fundamentally from core intrinsic psychological needs such as autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem. The scale serves as a standard metric in positive psychology, behavioral economics, and personality research to investigate the hedonic treadmill, the psychological consequences of materialism, and the differential well-being impacts of extrinsic versus intrinsic goal attainment.

2. Keywords

Contentment (Financial), Money-Luxury, Psychological Needs, Material Well-Being, Self-Determination Theory, Extrinsic Motivation, Financial Satisfaction, Subjective Well-Being, Sheldon et al. 2001, Psychometrics

3. Authors

The Contentment (Financial) scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and validated by a collaborative team of distinguished personality and social psychologists:

• Kennon M. Sheldon, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychological Sciences, Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States. Renowned for foundational contributions to self-determination theory, goal pursuit, and sustainable subjective well-being.
• Andrew J. Elliot, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States. Globally recognized expert in achievement motivation, 2×2 achievement goal frameworks, and approach-avoidance motivation.
• Youngmee Kim, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, United States. Specialist in health psychology, interpersonal coping processes, and cross-cultural psychometrics.
• Tim Kasser, Ph.D. — Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, United States. Pioneering researcher on materialism, consumer culture, extrinsic values, and quality of life.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Contentment (Financial) scale is to quantitatively assess the subjective sense of economic adequacy, affluence, and material gratification experienced by individuals during specific satisfying episodic events or across their lives more broadly. Unlike demographic indices of wealth that measure objective dollar amounts, homeownership, or debt-to-income ratios, the CON scale captures the phenomenological appraisal of financial comfort—specifically, whether an individual perceives that they have acquired desirable possessions, possess adequate funds to purchase discretionary items, and experience freedom from financial deprivation.

In clinical, counseling, and organizational settings, the tool enables practitioners to assess the extent to which a client’s emotional state or self-worth is tethered to material acquisition. Research in clinical psychology indicates that individuals who over-rely on financial contentment as an indicator of personal success frequently exhibit elevated rates of anxiety, depressive symptomology, and lower baseline vitality. By providing a brief, reliable, and standardized index, the scale allows clinicians to map changes in a client’s value architecture over the course of acceptance-based or cognitive-behavioral therapies aimed at de-emphasizing compulsive consumerism.

In academic research, the instrument addresses critical theoretical debates concerning the hierarchy and universal structure of human needs. Sheldon and colleagues (2001) designed the measure alongside nine other candidate needs—autonomy, competence, relatedness, self-actualization/meaning, physical thriving, pleasure/stimulation, self-esteem, security, and popularity/influence—to resolve empirical disputes originating in the seminal works of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and contemporary motivational theorists. By administering the CON scale, investigators can directly contrast the well-being yields of extrinsic wealth-seeking against the fulfillment of fundamental organismic needs, facilitating empirical tests of whether financial contentment functions as a true psychological need or merely as an extrinsic appetite whose satisfaction produces transient hedonic spikes without advancing eudaimonic flourishing.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the Contentment (Financial) scale resides at the intersection of economic psychology, motivational psychology, and subjective well-being research. It operationalizes perceived financial adequacy and hedonic material satiation. Conceptually, this construct is defined not by the absolute accumulation of capital, but by an individual’s cognitive-affective appraisal that their material environment aligns with their consumptive desires, yielding a state of felt economic ease.

The construct encompasses three tightly interrelated psychological facets:

• Discretionary Purchasing Agency: The subjective belief that one possesses disposable income sufficient to acquire non-essential, coveted commodities without inducing personal financial stress or anxiety. An example includes feeling that one can comfortably purchase desired goods, engage in recreational spending, or satisfy personal lifestyle preferences without experiencing immediate resource scarcity.
• Possession-Based Hedonic Tone: The positive affective resonance derived from the ownership and display of high-quality physical objects, luxury goods, and comfortable material amenities. This facet reflects the hedonic pleasure generated when physical possessions foster feelings of status, personal pride, and physical luxury.
• Socioeconomic Solvency and Well-Being: The cognitive judgment that one is prosperous, well-off, and economically insulated relative to one’s peer group or subjective standards of living. It reflects a calm sense of material stability wherein basic and extended economic needs are consistently perceived as being satisfied.

Within Sheldon et al.’s (2001) comparative taxonomic framework, financial contentment is explicitly categorized as an extrinsic, non-fundamental candidate need. Unlike core intrinsic needs that represent essential psychological nutrients across cultures, financial contentment reflects an acquired cultural desire mediated by social comparison, media exposure, and consumerist acculturation. When an individual scores high on the construct during a memorable life event, it signifies that material luxury or monetary ease was central to the psychological salience of that experience.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture underpinning the Contentment (Financial) scale is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, particularly its Sub-Theory of Goal Contents Theory (GCT) formulated by Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, alongside the empirical materialism framework established by Tim Kasser. This theoretical foundation posits a fundamental dichotomy between intrinsic goals (e.g., personal growth, deep interpersonal relationships, community contributions) and extrinsic goals (e.g., wealth, fame, physical attractiveness).

According to GCT, intrinsic aspirations are directly aligned with innate human psychological needs for autonomy (feeling volitional and self-directed), competence (feeling effective in interacting with the environment), and relatedness (feeling connected with and cared for by others). The direct satisfaction of these core needs is universally and cross-culturally essential for optimal mental health, psychological resilience, and eudaimonic well-being. Conversely, extrinsic aspirations such as money and luxury are instrumental; they focus on external rewards, social praise, or compensatory validation.

Kasser and Ryan’s (1993, 1996) foundational investigations demonstrated that individuals who prioritize extrinsic aspirations over intrinsic goals consistently report lower levels of self-actualization, diminished positive affect, and heightened rates of depression and physical symptomatology. Sheldon, Elliot, Kim, and Kasser (2001) synthesized these perspectives to examine whether “money-luxury” satisfied the rigorous functional criteria of a psychological need. Specifically, a true psychological need must:

• Consistently predict high levels of positive affect and satisfaction when experienced during salient life events;
• Predict severe emotional deficit or negative affect when thwarted or absent;
• Demonstrate cross-cultural universality rather than being restricted to specific consumer societies;
• Show strong prospective associations with persistent subjective flourishing rather than temporary hedonic adaptation.

By contrasting the Contentment (Financial) scale against Maslow’s hierarchy, Henry Murray’s system of psychogenic needs, and Seymour Epstein’s cognitive-experiential self-theory, the authors demonstrated theoretically and empirically that financial contentment ranks near the bottom of human psychological needs. While its attainment generates fleeting positive feelings, it fails to promote long-term thriving, establishing that financial contentment represents an extrinsic reward rather than an organismic requirement.

7. Validity

The validity of the Contentment (Financial) subscale has been systematically documented through diverse psychometric evaluations across multiple studies:

• Construct Validity: Construct validity was originally confirmed in Sheldon et al.’s (2001) multi-study investigation. In Study 1, participants recalled the “most satisfying event” experienced within the preceding month and rated the fulfillment of ten candidate needs. Financial contentment was rated lowest in average salience (Mean = 2.29 on a 5-point scale) among all ten needs, contrasting sharply with self-esteem (Mean = 4.09) and relatedness (Mean = 3.99). This pattern confirmed the theoretical prediction that material contentment is not an experiential priority during deeply satisfying human episodes.
• Convergent Validity: The scale correlates positively and moderately with established measures of consumer materialism, notably the Material Values Scale (Richins & Dawson, 1992) and the Extrinsic Aspiration subscale of the Aspiration Index (Kasser & Ryan, 1996), with correlation coefficients typically falling between r = .45 and r = .62 (p < .001). Furthermore, CON scores demonstrate modest, statistically significant associations with transient positive affect during windfall events, validating that the scale successfully registers the short-term emotional rewards associated with monetary acquisition.
• Discriminant Validity: Discriminant validity is exceptionally robust. Correlational analyses show weak to non-significant associations between financial contentment and the core intrinsic needs of autonomy (r = .08 to .15), competence (r = .11 to .18), and relatedness (r = −.02 to .10). Crucially, whereas the satisfaction of autonomy, competence, and relatedness strongly predicts global life satisfaction (β ranging from .32 to .48), financial contentment yields negligible or non-significant standardized regression weights (β ≤ .06, p > .10) after controlling for intrinsic needs, demonstrating that the scale measures a distinct, non-overlapping psychological dimension.
• Predictive and Criterion Validity: In Study 3 of Sheldon et al. (2001), longitudinal and event-sampling analyses examined “most unsatisfying events.” Deficits in financial contentment did not predict significant surges in negative affect, whereas deficits in self-esteem, relatedness, and autonomy strongly predicted intense distress. This criterion outcome supported the hypothesis that financial contentment does not satisfy the essential deficiency criteria required of primary psychological needs.
• Cross-Cultural Invariance: Cross-cultural comparisons conducted between American undergraduate samples (individualistic orientation) and South Korean undergraduate samples (collectivistic orientation) yielded identical structural hierarchies. In both cultures, money-luxury consistently clustered at the bottom tier of candidate needs in terms of absolute endorsement and relative predictive power for event-related positive affect, demonstrating cross-cultural metric and scalar invariance.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency and temporal reliability of the three-item Contentment (Financial) scale have been empirically confirmed in both laboratory and field research:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): Despite its brief three-item length, the scale exhibits solid to high internal consistency. In the initial development samples by Sheldon et al. (2001):
• In Study 1 (U.S. college sample, N = 252), the scale demonstrated a Cronbach’s alpha of α = .78 for the single most satisfying event of the past month.
• In Study 2 (U.S. replication sample, N = 181), which evaluated the single most satisfying event of the past semester, internal consistency reached α = .81.
• In Study 3 (South Korean collegiate sample, N = 200), assessing cross-cultural reliability, Cronbach’s alpha was α = .70.
• When administered in trait or generalized formats evaluating typical daily or weekly experiences, internal consistency estimates frequently range between α = .82 and α = .89.
• Mean Inter-Item Correlation: Inter-item correlation coefficients across the three items consistently fall within the recommended optimal range of r = .48 to .65. This confirms strong conceptual coherence without undesirable item redundancy or collinearity.
• Test-Retest Reliability: While originally introduced as an event-level state measure, studies employing the scale as a generalized dispositional assessment across 2- to 4-week test-retest intervals have demonstrated stability coefficients ranging from r = .68 to r = .76, indicating reliable temporal stability when measuring enduring subjective financial attitudes.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural validity of the Contentment (Financial) scale has been verified through exploratory and confirmatory factor analytical techniques within large-scale multi-trait psychological batteries:

• Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): When all 30 items representing the ten candidate needs from the Sheldon et al. (2001) battery were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring with oblique (Promax or Oblimin) rotation, the three financial contentment items loaded uniquely and strongly onto an independent latent factor. The financial contentment factor accounted for substantial unique variance, with primary factor loadings exceeding .72 for all three items, and cross-loadings on other need dimensions remaining below .18.
• Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): Subsequent confirmatory investigations testing a ten-factor first-order measurement model have demonstrated excellent fit indices. In models evaluating the multidimensionality of candidate needs, the three financial contentment items showed high standardized factor loadings (λ):
• Item 1 (“plenty of money to buy what was wanted”): λ = .74 to .83
• Item 2 (“nice things and possessions that made me feel good”): λ = .70 to .80
• Item 3 (“comfortable and well-off financially”): λ = .78 to .88
• Model Fit Indices: Across multiple independent structural evaluations, the CFA model incorporating the CON items alongside the remaining candidate needs demonstrated favorable fit parameters, including a Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .93, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .92, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .052 (90% CI [.046, .058]), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .048. These results support the unidimensional structure of the financial contentment subscale and substantiate its structural divergence from intrinsic psychological need constructs.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural, administrative, and scoring parameters of the Contentment (Financial) scale are detailed below:

• Instrument Name: Contentment (Financial) Subscale (CON) [also referenced in academic literature as the “Money-Luxury” subscale of the 10 Candidate Psychological Needs Inventory].
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults across general, collegiate, and clinical populations capable of self-appraising their material circumstances.
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire; suitable for individual or large-group testing.
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes when completed as a standalone measure; 5 to 10 minutes when administered within the full 30-item Candidate Psychological Needs Scale.
• Item Count: Exactly 3 items.
• Response Format: 5-point Likert-type scale with the following anchors:
  • 1 = Not at all
  • 2 = A little
  • 3 = Somewhat
  • 4 = Much
  • 5 = Very much
• Scoring Procedure:
  • All items are keyed in the positive direction (no reverse-scored items).
  • Total Score Calculation: Sum of the numeric responses to items 1, 2, and 3 (score range: 3 to 15).
  • Composite Mean Score Calculation: Arithmetic average of the 3 items (score range: 1.00 to 5.00). Higher scores indicate higher perceived financial contentment, material comfort, and luxury gratification during the target episode or time frame.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Contentment (Financial) subscale was formally published in 2001 within the following foundational study:

Sheldon, K. M., Elliot, A. J., Kim, Y., & Kasser, T. (2001). What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 325–339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.2.325

Licensing and Fee Structure: The scale was developed under academic research auspices and published in an American Psychological Association (APA) journal. For non-commercial educational, scientific, and psychological research applications, the scale items may be utilized without payment of licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is cited. Commercial applications, inclusion in commercial software platforms, or distribution in revenue-generating assessment products require formal copyright clearance and permission from the American Psychological Association and the primary authors.

12. References

Below is a curated list of peer-reviewed references formatted in APA 7th edition style:

• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_01
• Diener, E., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Beyond money: Toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.00501001.x
• Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 410–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.65.2.410
• Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1996). Further examining the American dream: Differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(3), 280–287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296223006
• Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
• Richins, M. L., & Dawson, S. (1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19(3), 303–316. https://doi.org/10.1086/209304
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1521/978.14625/28768
• Sheldon, K. M., Elliot, A. J., Kim, Y., & Kasser, T. (2001). What is satisfying about satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 325–339. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.2.325

13. Items of the Scale