Abstrac

The short story, The Necklace, by Guy De Maupassant, follows the life of a woman and her husband living in France in the early 1880’s. The woman, Mathilde, is avery materialistic person who is never content with anything in her life. Her husband, a lowly clerk in the Ministry of Education, is not a rich man, but he brings homeenough to get by. He enjoys the simpler things in life, yet his wife, Mathilde, cannot. Nothing is good enough for her. Her selfish ways are evident in her attitudetoward the material things in her home environment and in the way she treats her husband.

Burdsal Jr.,C. (1975). "AN EXAMINATION OF SECOND ORDER MOTIVATIONALFACTORS AS FOUND IN ADULTS". Journal of genetic psychology,127(1), 83.

Examines general underlying factors in dynamic motivational traits identified by Cattel'sMotivational Analysis Test. Results of a factor analysis of the intercorrelations of the dynamics; Identification of six general motivational factors, including SelfishValues and Materialistic.

This is a very useful article because it explains how and why is becoming the selfish and the matirealistic in a person. And it alsobecause it helps to understand why Mathilde in the story become a selfish and a materialistc person.


This study measures the relative importance of selfishness andsocial capital motives using resource allocation data collected in hypothetical surveys and non-hypothetical experiments. Social capital motives allow an agent''swell-being to be influenced by his sympathetic relationships with others. The assumption that selfishness can explain nearly all resource allocations is rejected.