Values, Psychology of

Abstract

Values are internalized cognitive structures that guide choices by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong, a sense of priorities, and a willingness to make meaning and see patterns. Like other cognitive constructs, values can be studied at the individual level or at the group level. That is societies, cultures, and other social groups have value-based norms, priorities, and guidelines, which describe what people ought to do if they are to do the ‘right,’ ‘moral,’ ‘valued’ thing. The study of values currently focuses more explicitly on the circumstances in which values predict action.

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From Oyserman, D., 2015. Values, Psychology of. In: James D. Wright (editor-in-chief),
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol
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Values, Psychology of
Daphna Oyserman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Ó2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract
Values are internalized cognitive structures that guide choices by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong,
a sense of priorities, and a willingness to make meaning and see patterns. Like other cognitive constructs, values can be
studied at the individual level or at the group level. That is societies, cultures, and other social groups have value-based norms,
priorities, and guidelines, which describe what people ought to do if they are to do the ‘right,’‘moral,’‘valued’thing. The
study of values currently focuses more explicitly on the circumstances in which values predict action.
Values: Psychological Perspectives
Values are internalized cognitive structures that guide choices
by evoking a sense of basic principles of right and wrong (e.g.,
moral values), a sense of priorities (e.g., personal achievement
vs group good), and create a willingness to make meaning and
see patterns (e.g., trust vs distrust). Like other cognitive
constructs, values can be studied at the individual level.
However, while it is unusual to discuss attitudes as a group-
level phenomenon, values are amenable to analysis at the
societal or group level. That is societies, cultures, and other
social groups have value-based norms, priorities, and guide-
lines, which describe what people ought to do if they are to do
the ‘right,’‘moral,’‘valued’thing. A society, political party, or
region can be described as having conservative or liberal values,
traditional or progressive values, religious or secular values,
and so on.
Values are supposed to influence behavior and people are
suspicious of others if they suspect that they hold different
values in part because of the presumed link between values and
behavior. Knowing a person’s value system provides a sense
that one also knows what he or she will do in a particular
situation or across situations. In spite of the strong belief that
values predict behavior, the effect of values on behavior is
subject to situational constraints and affordances. That is, if
mobilized or made salient, individual values are linked with
behavior and choices but not necessarily otherwise.
However, if values do not come to mind, they are unlikely
to influence judgment and behavior. Cultures may be said to
provide concrete and social embodiments of values. Thus, if
cultural values are mobilized or made salient, they also
predict behavior and choices of groups and to some extent, of
individuals within these groups. Whether cultural cues (e.g.,
the national flag) serve to cue relevant values may depend on
whether their appearance in context seems unremarkable or
an obvious attempt to cue a particular value response. Some
kinds of values, those that form the basis of moral judgments,
appear to have a more visceral effect on judgment, influencing
how people feel about a topic, situation, or choice separately
from their cognitive evaluation of the topic, situation, or
choice. Thus values can cue affective (feeling) as well as
cognitive (thinking) responses. The effect of values on judg-
ments and behavior can be seen whether the value is explicitly
part of the decision-making or not. That is, a value can be
associated with a choice without the association being
made explicit.
Overview
This article addresses the following questions. First, what are
values, how do psychologists study values, and how are values
distinguishable from related concepts –motives, goals, and
attitudes? Second, are values best considered at the individual
level as located within individuals, or at the context level, as if
located in social structures, or are both levels of analyses
needed to understand values? Third, what do values imply for
behavior? With regard to the first question, values are often
studied by asking people to rate how important certain state-
ments are to them or to people in their group. These methods
rely on explicit judgments which may be subject to the same
variety of constraints as all self-report measures (including, for
example, whether people can make explicit judgments about
what they value, and social desirability –the desire to say things
that the questioner will approve of). Reliance on self-report
makes values difficult to study and persistent questions arise
as to whether they are ‘real,’that is, whether they actually can be
shown to have causal influence on behavior.
In spite of this difficulty, values have intuitive appeal as an
explanatory construct. Much of everyday life is cast in terms of
values, value judgments, or value preferences. Think of ethics,
law, religion, politics, education, art, lifestyle, child rearing, and
more. Choices in these domains are often explained in terms of
values and the value trade-offs one is willing or unwilling to
make. Abstract value judgments are embodied in seeming gut
reactions that something is right, moral, or natural verses
wrong, immoral, or unnatural. Another way to ‘see’values in
action is to contrast cultures or subcultures in what seems right,
natural, or moral.
Empirically, an emerging literature uses priming techniques
to show that values matter when brought to mind, not other-
wise and that what a value means depends on the context in
which it is considered. Values related to loyalty (e.g., patri-
otism) and to acceptance of authority (e.g., traditionalism), for
example, are associated with more trust in government. This
effect occurs only in contexts in which government functions
brought to mind are relevant to these (e.g., trusting the
government to make the right choices for defense spending)
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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition, 2015, 36–40
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not otherwise (e.g., trusting the government to make the right
choices for health care). A similar argument has been made for
the role of values in acceptance of social policies, polices that
appear to come from one’s own political party are preferred in
part because in-group loyalty is valued.
Another way in which values are studied is by comparison.
Comparisons in choices, behavior, social structures have all
been used to infer differences in values. One of the great
contributions of cultural and cross-cultural research is the way
that it brings Western cultural values into sharp relief by
making these values stand out in comparison to alternative
frames of core values. These and other differences are also
found in comparisons of political parties, social classes, reli-
gions, and even professions. Consider American cultural
values, Americans are said to value life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. But what does ‘value’mean? Implicitly or
explicitly we evaluate or assign value to everything –regarding
things as good or bad, a truth or falsity, a virtue or a vice. How
do we know? One important means is through values. Values
can be thought of as priorities, internal compasses, or spring-
boards for action –moral imperatives. In this way, values or
mores are implicit or explicit guides for action; they are general
scripts framing what is sought after and what is to be avoided.
Values can be thought of as scaffolded on universal human
needs for security, autonomy, and connection, which would
imply that since all cultures face similar problems they are
likely to overlap in values (though not necessarily in their
ranking of the importance of each value). To sustain a group,
for example, people have to believe that their place within the
group is fairly assigned, that authority is justly applied and not
used in a harmful way.
Each of these is a value judgment, while the need for these
core values may emerge from an evolutionary basis, the relative
importance of each value may emerge from socialization
within the family. Thus, saying that Americans value life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness does not necessarily imply
that people from other societies value these things less. Rather
it implies that Americans are likely to consider security,
autonomy, and connection as needing to fit together in ways
that maximize autonomy while not undermining security and
connection. Moreover, Americans may differ in the relative
weight that they put on these core values depending on their
social class, political affiliation, and profession, because each of
these provides a particular meaning to what connection, secu-
rity, and autonomy mean. Connection can focus on loyalty to
in-group and security can mean purity and sanctity to differing
degrees among different groups. This has been studied both by
cultural and cross-cultural psychologists interested in cultures
of honor and by psychologists interested in morality both
generally and as part of the study of other domains, including
religion, politics, and organizational processes.
Definitions
Modern theories of values are grounded in the work of Kohn
(class and values), Rokeach (general value systems), Merton
(social structure and values), and Kluckhohn (group-level
values). For example, Rokeach defines values as shared
proscriptive or prescriptive beliefs about ideal modes of
behavior and end states (outcomes) –what is worth striving
for. Social groups couple these ideals about modes of behavior
and outcomes with regulations of allowable ways to attain
these outcomes. Thus values can focus on both the outcomes
and the procedures or process (behaviors) used to attain the
outcomes. Moral foundations theory (Haidt and Joseph)
builds on this work focusing on moral principles –values one
should live by, and bridges from psychological and socio-
logical accounts to anthropological and evolutionary accounts
of morality to understand core values, which they term virtues.
Actualizing one’s talents, enjoying oneself, leading
a purposeful life, caring for the next generation are all exam-
ples of operationalization of values into behaviors and
outcomes.
Values can be conceptualized on the individual and group
level. At the individual level, values are internalized social
representations or moral beliefs that people appeal to as the
ultimate rationale for their actions. Though individuals in
a society are likely to differ in the relative importance assigned
to a particular value, values are an internalization of sociocul-
tural goals that provide a means of self-regulation of impulses
that would otherwise bring individuals in conflict with the
needs of the groups and structures within which they live. Thus,
discussion of values is intimately tied with social life. At the
group level, values are scripts or cultural ideals held in common
by members of a group; the group’s‘social mind.’Differences
in these cultural ideals, especially those with a moral compo-
nent, determine and distinguish different social systems. In
this sense Weber’s Protestant ‘ethic’and ‘spirit’of capitalism
describe value systems.
Values, to which individuals feel they owe an allegiance as
members of a particular group or society, are seen as the glue
that makes social life possible within groups. Yet, they also set
the stage for frictions and lack of consensual harmony in
intergroup interactions. Values are thus at the heart of the
human enterprise; embedded in social systems, they are what
makes social order both possible and resistant to change.
Values are not simply individual traits, they are social agree-
ments about what is right, good, to be cherished.
What is common to all value phenomena? At the indi-
vidual level, values contain cognitive and affective elements
and have a selective or directional quality; they are internal-
ized. Preference, judgment, and action are commonly
explained in terms of values. Values may be grounded in
evolutionary press to prefer people, contexts, and situations
which do not spread disease or harm, resulting in values of
purity, fairness, caring, loyalty to in-group, and acceptance of
authority that are differentially emphasized across time, place,
and situation. Individuals take on values as part of sociali-
zation into a family, group, and society. Once taken on, values
are assumed relatively fixed over time (see Values Across
Cultures, Development of). Indeed, values that are individu-
ally endorsed and highly accessible to the individual do
predict that individual’s behavior. Conversely, even person-
ally endorsed values would not influence action when they are
not made salient to the individual at the time of action.
Moreover, in any given situation more than one personally
endorsed value may apply, and the behavioral choice appro-
priate for one value may conflict with the behavioral choice
appropriate to another value.
Values, Psychology of 37
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Values are codes or general principles guiding action; they
are not the actions themselves nor are specific checklists of what
to do and when to do it. Thus, two societies can both value
achievement but differ tremendously in their norms as to what
to achieve, how to achieve, and when pursuing achievement is
appropriate. Values underlie the sanctions for some behavioral
choices and the rewards for others. A value system presents
what is expected and what is hoped for, what is required and
what is forbidden. It is not a report of actual behavior but
a system of criteria by which behavior is judged and sanctions
applied. Values scaffold likes and dislikes, what feels pleasant
and unpleasant, and what is deemed a success or failure. Values
and value systems are often evoked as rationales for action; for
example, values of freedom and equality were evoked to elicit
American support for the Civil Rights movements. Values differ
from goals in that values provide a general rationale for more
specific goals and motivate attainment of goals through
particular methods.
History and Current Developments
Initially viewed with suspicion by Western social scientists as
too subjective for scientific study, the concept of values found
increasing use beginning with The Polish Peasant in Europe and
America (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1921). Impetus for the study
of cultural values comes from the work of Alfred Kroeber,
Clyde Kluckhohn, Talcott Parsons, Charles Morris,
Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, Raymond Firth, A.I. Hallowell,
and more currently from Michael Bond, Jonathan Haidt,
Geerdt Hofstede, Ronald Inglehart, Milton Rokeach, and
Shalom Schwartz.
Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961) proposed that cultural
value systems are variations of a set of basic value orientations
that flow from answers to five basic questions about being.
These are first, what is human nature –evil, neutral, mixed, or
good? Second, how do we relate to nature or supernatural –
subjugation, harmony, or mastery? Third, what is the nature
of time –past, present, or future? Fourth, what is the nature of
human activity –being, being-in-becoming, or doing? And
fifth, what is the nature of our relationship to others –are we
joined vertically, horizontally or are we simply separate indi-
viduals? Klukhohn and Strodtbeck also organized a system for
comparing values in terms of their level of generalization and
function in discourse and conduct, proposing that values fit
into a pyramid of ascending generalization. For each society,
a few central or focal values were proposed to constitute
a mutually interdependent set of what makes for the ‘good life.’
These include the unquestioned, self-justifying premises of the
society’s value system and definitions of basic and general
value terms; for example, happiness, virtue, beauty, and
morality. The basic questions raised by Klukhohn and Strodt-
beck continue to be studied, for example, by asking if societies
differ in the propensity to accept or value vertical relations in
which power differential is clear.
Since American researchers dominated values research,
much early work focused on documenting American values. As
early as 1944, need for achievement was described as an
important or even a defining American value which was in
decline (Spates, 1983). The idea that American values are in
decline continues to be a hot topic of political debate. Some
relevant research focuses on change over time in narcissism, the
extent that individuals (over) value themselves, and their own
needs and desires compared to others.
Early values studies documented the influence of education,
age, type of employment, and socioeconomic status on value
preferences of Americans, adding to Weber’s thesis of the
influence of religion (Protestantism vs Catholicism) on
achievement and work values in Europe. Kohn (1977) was
responsible for a number of important values surveys doc-
umenting that in various European countries and the
United States, parents of higher socioeconomic status value
self-direction in their children more than parents of lower
educational and occupational levels. These findings have been
verified cross-nationally in 122 societies. The influence of
education on values continues to be hotly debated, the concern
being that education carries with it reduced acceptance of
traditional values (e.g., submission to authority, obedience).
However, within the United States, for example, there is no
evidence that political party affiliation or religiosity is causally
influenced by obtaining a college degree.
Extending the documentation of American values,
Rokeach (1973) validated empirically 36 values related to
preferred end states and preferred ways of behaving. Using
Rokeach’s scale, value differences tied to class, age, race,
subculture, and level of differences were documented in many
countries. Building on Rokeach, Schwartz (1992) delineates
values as ways of articulating universal requirements of
human existence –to survive physically, have social inter-
change, and provide group continuity. For Schwartz, values
represent operationalizations of these needs as goals that fit
together in meaningful clusters (achievement, self-direction,
stimulation, hedonism, universalism, benevolence, tradi-
tion, conformity, security, and power). Some clusters are
compatible (e.g., stimulation and hedonism) and others
compete (e.g., self-direction and conformity).
Using mostly data from teachers and college students in
20 primarily Western countries, Schwartz shows that, with the
exception of China, specific values mostly do ‘cluster’and
‘compete’as expected. Thus, ‘honest,’‘forgiving,’and ‘helpful’
cluster together as ‘benevolence,’and ‘self-direction,’and
‘stimulation’cluster far from ‘conformity,’‘tradition,’and
‘security.’These data suggest important universality to how
values are organized cross-culturally and that societies differ in
which clusters of values predominate public life.
More recent analyses, using as its base, all literature pub-
lished between 1980 and 2000 comparing Americans either
with one another or with people from other countries on the
extent that they endorse values of individualism and collec-
tivism suggest that Americans are neither the most individu-
alistic nor the least collectivistic of people (Oyserman et al.,
2002). There was no difference between America and other
English-speaking countries and only relatively small differences
between Europe (Western and Central) and America, with
Americans being higher in individualism. The majority of
available studies (40%) focused on comparisons between East
Asians and Americans, making them the most common
comparison in the cross-national individualism literature.
Combined effect sizes for comparisons with East Asia were
moderate in size, as were combined effect sizes for Africa and
38 Values, Psychology of
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the Middle East. Whereas these findings corroborate conven-
tional expectations of cultural theorists, surprisingly the
combined effect size for countries in the “other Asia”region
including India and Pakistan was small. Moreover, no differ-
ence in individualism was found between the United States and
South America, with Americans in the United States being less
individualistic than Latin Americans in South America in more
than half of the country samples tested by Oyserman and her
colleagues. With regard to collectivism, Americans were found
to value collectivism less than were others from all regions of
the world, with the exception of English-speaking countries.
Surprisingly, Americans were lower in collectivism than
Europeans were, befitting the idea of a uniquely American way
of being (high individualism and low collectivism) but chal-
lenging the notion of a single ‘Western’cultural set of values. In
addition, effect sizes for Asian regions were similar to those for
European regions, with large differences in valuing collectivism
only when US and African samples were compared. Almost half
of all studies focused on comparisons between East-Asian
regions and America but effects were heterogeneous implying
that simple between group comparisons would not necessarily
yield value differences.
Priming people to consider their cultural values changes the
extent that they feel obligated to act to help others rather than
do their own thing (for a review, Oyserman and Lee, 2008).
Values frameworks have been broadened to include Confucian
values such as valuing relationships, valuing the family as the
model of relationships, valuing a basic benevolence in
engaging with others, and valuing hard work, skill develop-
ment, and thrift (education, industriousness) (Hofstede and
Bond, 1988). Cultural researchers have also shown that
changes in societies produce rapid changes in values as well as
in which personality and social interaction styles are valued.
Emotional expressivity and outgoingness are valued more as
societies shift toward individualistic values.
Controversies
Key tensions in the values literature focus on the conditions
under which they may influence behavior, and the appropriate
level of analyses for seeing values in action. Interest in values as
a research focus has ebbed in the past as each paradigm for
studying values has been criticized for lack of specificity of
findings as due to values as distinct from other constructs,
including social norms, attitudes, or situational constraints.
Current cultural psychology focuses attention on social struc-
tures as the repository of values such as personal freedom,
group harmony, personal happiness, and duty or filial piety.
How do we know that values exist? A number of options
are available: (1) Individual testimony –people say what
values they hold. Yet, self-reports of values are subject to
pronounced context effects (see Attitudes and Behavior).
(2) Behavioral choices –either in naturalistic or laboratory
settings, value differences may be imputed from behavior.
Yet, behavior is influenced by many variables other than
values. At the individual level, values themselves are
assumedtolinktobehaviorsviatheirinfluence on norms
and attitudes, but people may infer their values from their
behavior, reversing the causal relationship. (3) Cultural and
social structures –expenditure of resources, time, energy, and
structuring of the natural environment; cultural products
can be seen as concrete residues of value-based choices
(see Cross-Cultural Psychology; Cultural Psychology).
(4) Social interchange –observation of behavior in situations
of conflict, and more generally observation of what is
rewarded or punished, praised or vilified provides data for
identifying what is socially valued. Here, too, the question of
appropriate evidence arises. To what extent is it appropriate
to assume that differences in social structures and societies
are evidence of value differences? Political and economic
influences and simple inertia may set the stage for behaviors,
without a causal influence of necessarily values.
Future Directions
Cross-cultural perspectives are currently becoming increas-
ingly central to values discussion. For example Inglehart
(1990) documented values and value change in a large
multinational study, and thus a large number of two-nation
comparison studies has emerged. Another important topic of
research is the connection between values of individuals,
values of subcultural groups, and values of larger cultural
systems and methods for identifying and studying each of
these. Perhaps in addition to identifying value vocabularies at
each level, it is time to begin to ask whether values appropri-
ately are studied as fixed traits of individuals or as embodied in
groups and to what extent values research is synonymous with
cultural and cross-cultural research.
Given that any particular behavior importantly is influenced
by context effects that make certain information salient at the
moment of action, it is not surprising that the effects of indi-
vidual value endorsements on behavior have a ‘sometimes you
see it, sometimes you don’t’quality about them. But focusing
on individual endorsement of values may miss much of the
power of value systems to influence everyday life. That is,
individuals may not need to personally endorse or have salient
particular values in order for their influence to be felt. The most
profound influence of values may be through the ways that
they influence rules, norms, procedures within a society, and in
this way structure the everyday life choices for individuals
within a society.
Thus, whereas previous researchers have documented values
using survey techniques in which individuals rated the extent to
which various values were important to them, future assess-
ment of values may need to consider more indirect approaches
such as what services a society provides its members, what
behaviors are rewarded or sanctioned and so on.
See also: Attitudes and Behavior; Collectivism and
Individualism: Cultural and Psychological Concerns; Critical
Psychology; Cross-Cultural Psychology; Levels of Analysis in
Social Psychology; Social Cognition; Social Psychology; Values
Across Cultures, Development of; Values, Anthropology of;
Values, Sociology of; Vocational Interests, Values, and
Preferences, Psychology of.
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