Materialistic youth seem to be languishing while grateful youth seem to be
flourishing. High school students (N = 1,035) completed measures of materialism, gratitude,
academic functioning, envy, depression, life satisfaction, social integration, and
absorption. Using structural equation modeling, we found that gratitude, controlling for
materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered: higher grade point average, life
satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression. In
contrast, materialism, controlling for gratitude, uniquely predicts three of the six outcomes:
lower grade point average, as well as higher envy and life satisfaction. Furthermore, when
examining the relative strengths of gratitude and materialism as predictors, we found that
gratitude is generally a stronger predictor of these six outcomes than is materialism