Couples who rank money and material goods as very important might be worse off in their relationships than those who aren’t as materialistic, according to a new US study. 

Researchers surveyed 1,734 married couples across the U.S. about their attitudes toward relationship values and issues such as materialism, compassion, communication and the importance of marriage.

For one in five couples in the study, both partners admitted a strong love of money. Though these couples were better off financially, money was often a bigger source of conflict for them. Meanwhile, 24.1 per cent were both non-materialistic, while the rest had dissimilar materialism levels, with one spouse ranking high and the other low.

Couples who didn’t place high value on money and things scored higher–about 10 to 15 per cent–on almost every marriage feature on the questionnaire compared with couples who valued materialism. The scores of mismatched couples fell between those who were matched.

“Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at,” the lead author, Professor Jason Carroll, said in a news release.

Professor Carroll, who teaches on family life at Brigham Young University, added, “There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other.”

Researchers expected there would be more conflict and lower marital satisfaction when there was a mismatch in values between partners, with one being materialistic and the other not, Carroll said.

“However, our study found that it’s actually the couples where both have high levels of materialism that struggled the most,” he said. “So even when spouses were unified in that value stance, they were the couples that (fared the worst).”

Having more money didn’t necessarily make things better. Couples in which both spouses were materialistic tended to be wealthier than couples who didn’t place such importance on money.

The authors suggested that this may have implications for couples’ counselling.

“Efforts to develop new interventions aimed directly at addressing the problems associated with materialism in marriage,” they wrote, “may be particularly relevant in the current economic context where financial resources may be lower than many couples’ expectations.”

The study was released this week in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy.