Self and society - Values Flashcards
What are values?
- What is important to people in their lives - Basic motivations
- Socially positive (there’s an element of ideology)
- Organized in personal hierarchies (certain values are more important to individuals and this hierarchy determines how people perceive situations and how they behave)
In what situations do values exist and how available are they?
- They are general (transcend situations) – exist across situations
- Relatively stable (across both situations and time – something would have to happen for them to change, they could predict things)
- Available to consciousness (people know what’s important to them)
What are values systematically related to?
- Background variables (e.g., age, education, culture) – e.g., younger people tend to value hedonism and stimulation and older people tend to have conservation values of tradition, conformity and security.
- Attitudes (e.g., towards political and policy issues)
- Preferences (e.g., political, university major, group identification)
- Behaviour (political, environmental, health, delinquency, alcohol use) – e.g., voting, recycling, becoming a criminal, binge drinking.
How do values work and name an example.
Can think of them at the core of our self and it has this ripple effect over many goals, attitudes and behaviours.
E.g., the values of the soldiers in the picture lead to different goals and attitudes and eventually behaviour.
How did Schwartz map the values in his questionnaire?
The map is derived empirically based on correlation between values.
• Values that are close to one another on the map tend to co-occur in people.
• E.g., people who say that ‘creativity’ is important to them, also say that ‘curiosity’ is important to them, they tend not to say that ‘accepting my portion in life’ is important to them.
How did Schwartz create a ‘value circle’?
• The researcher (Schwartz) drew lines to create these ‘wedge-like’ areas of values.
He gave these sections labels.
• His idea was that values form this motivational circle, in which values that are close to one another are similar to one another and stem from similar motivations.
• Values that emanate from opposite sides of the circle, stem from opposite or conflicting motivations.
Why are self-enhancement values are conflicting with the broad motivations of self-transcendence values.
Self-transcendence is when you want to transcend your selfish interests in order to promote and enhance other people. This can be with people close to you and that you interact with in benevolence values. Or it could be universalism values, where you want to promote the welfare of people far away from you and pursuing social justice and equality e.g., a group you don’t belong to or people you don’t know personally.
Explain the opposite poles of openness to change vs the opposite pole of conservation.
- Openness to change could be changes in self direction (changes in thinking and actions e.g., pursuing creativity, freedom and your own goals). - Tend to be new challenges and adventures
- This is conflicting with the values of conservation which is wanting to keep things the way they are and maintain traditions – motivated to conform to authority.
Give an example of how opposite values are difficult to pursue in the same act?
E.g., You are asked by a superior to do something that you do not want to do.
• If you agree you are able to pursue conformity values as well as security values because it’s safer to conform. - These two are very easily pursued together.
• But by conforming to a request that you disagree with, you violate the values of freedom and independence.
• Therefore, it is impossible to pursue both values at the same time. The theoretical idea is that as you grow up, we come to realise that you cannot pursue opposite values and have to decide what’s more important.
What is the bleed over effect?
Adjacent values in the circles have similar relations to any attitude or behaviour.
(If a particular value predicts behaviour, it’s likely that a neighbouring value will also predict this behaviour because they stem from similar motivations.)
E.g., problematic alcohol use positively related both to hedonism, and stimulation values (Dollinger & Kobayashi, 2003).
What is the seesaw effect?
An attitude or behaviour that positively relates to one value is often negatively related to the conflicting values.
(Any variable that is related to one value is likely to be negatively related to the opposite value)
E.g., Adolescents’ self-reported violence positively related to power values and negatively to universalism values (Knafo et al., 2008).
Why might people not behave according to values?
Could be due to situational pressures.
People don’t act according to one’s personality and instead act according to the situational pressures.
Benevolence is the most important value and the most frequent behaviour found. There is a norm that you have to behave in a benevolent way, even if you don’t personally value benevolence.
Conformity is also highly normative which means that people behave in a conforming way even if they don’t value conformity.
What did Schwartz and Bardi find about world agreement on value importance?
Found a very striking agreement in the world on what values are more important and what values are less important.
Benevolence tends to be the most important value and power tends to be the least important.
Do values predict behaviour?
This graph shows the values that were rated by participants and a corresponding rating of behaviour by an acquaintance of the participant. It shows that people tend to behave according to their values.
But sometimes this isn’t the case and people behave less according to values.
What kind of parents are most successful in transmitting their values to their kids?
- This study asked families in Germany and Switzerland to complete questionnaires about their values. A questionnaire was given to the parents and children about their own values.
- Also gave parents a questionnaire asking them what values they would like their children to have.
- Those who want their kids to value self-transcendence were the most successful at instilling all of their values.
- The reason for this could be because they instil and develop closer relationships with their children. The children end up talking to their parents more and respecting them more and as a result might be happy to adopt the values of their parents. – Similar to openness to change.
