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Human Values - Part 1
1.0 Introduction
Values have been a central concept in the social sciences since their inception. Values are multidisciplinary and have been used in sociology, psychology, anthropology, and related disciplines as well. Due to this widespread use, many different conceptions of this term have emerged. In the absence of an agreed-upon conception of basic values, application of this concept in various social sciences has suffered. When we think of our values, we think of what is important to us in life. Each of us holds numerous values (e.g., achievement, security, benevolence) with varying degrees of importance. A particular value may be very important to one person, but unimportant to another.
- Values are beliefs linked inextricably to affect. When values are activated, they become infused with feeling. People for whom independence is an important value become aroused if their independence is threatened, despair when they are helpless to protect it, and are happy when they can enjoy it.
- Values refer to desirable goals that motivate action. People, for whom social order, justice, and helpfulness are important values, are motivated to pursue these goals.
- Values transcend specific actions and situations. Obedience and honesty, for example, are values that may be relevant at work or in school, in sports, business, and politics, with family, friends, or strangers. This feature distinguishes values from narrower concepts, like norms and attitudes, that usually refer to specific actions, objects, or situations.
- Values serve as standards or criteria. Values guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and events. People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values. But, the impact of values in everyday decisions is rarely conscious. Values enter awareness when the actions or judgments one is considering, have conflicting implications for different values one cherishes.
- Values are ordered by importance relative to one another. People's values form an ordered system of value priorities that characterize them as individuals. Do they attribute more importance to achievement or justice, to novelty or tradition? This hierarchical feature also distinguishes values from norms and attitudes.
- The relative importance of multiple values guides action. Any attitude or behavior typically has implications for more than one value. For example, attending Church or going to Temples might express and promote tradition, conformity, and security values at the expense of hedonism and stimulation values. The tradeoff among relevant, competing values is what guides attitudes and behaviors. Values contribute to action to the extent that they are relevant in the context and important to the actor.
There are three universal requirements of existence. These are needs of individuals as biological organisms, requisites of coordinated social interaction, and survival and welfare needs of groups. All conceptions of values are grounded on these three requirements.
1.2 The Ten Values and their meanings
(1) Self-Direction
Objective: Independent thought and action
Self-direction satisfies an individual's need for control and and interactional requirements of autonomy and independence
Characteristics: choosing, creating, exploring
(2) Stimulation
Objective: Excitement, novelty, and challenge in life
Stimulation fulfills the need for variety and stimulation in order to maintain an optimal, positive, rather than threatening, level of activation. This need relates to the needs underlying self-direction values
Characteristics: a varied life, an exciting life, adventure
(3) Hedonism
Objective: Pleasure or sensuous gratification for oneself
Hedonism values derive from an individual's needs and the pleasure associated with satisfying them. Theorists from many disciplines mention hedonism
Characteristics: pleasure, enjoying life, self-indulgent
(4) Achievement
Objective: Personal success through demonstrating competence, according to social standards
Competent performance that generates resources is necessary for individuals to survive, and for groups and institutions to reach their objectives. Achievement values are defined as demonstrating competence in terms of prevailing cultural standards, thereby obtaining social approval
Characteristics: Ambitious, successful, capable, influential
(5) Power
Objective: Social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources
Social institutions depend upon some degree of differentiation to function smoothly. This gives rise to a dominance/submission dimension at both intra and intercultural levels. To justify this fact of social life, and to motivate group members to accept it, groups must treat power as a value. Power values may also be transformations of individual needs for dominance and control. Thinkers have mentioned power values as well
Characteristics: authority, wealth, social power
Both power and achievement values focus on social esteem. However, achievement values (e.g., ambitious) emphasize the active demonstration of successful performance in concrete interaction, whereas, power values (e.g., authority, wealth) emphasize the attainment or preservation of a dominant position within the more general social system
(6) Security
Objective: Safety, harmony, and stability of society, of relationships, and of self
Security values are important individual and group requirements. Some security values serve individual interests, others, wider group interests. Even the latter, however, express, to a significant degree, the goal of security for self. The two subtypes can, therefore, be unified into a more encompassing value
Characteristics: social order, family security, national security, clean, reciprocation of favors and a sense of belonging
(7) Conformity
Objective: Restraint of actions, inclinations, and impulses likely to upset or harm others and violate social expectations or norms
Individuals inhibit inclinations that might disrupt and undermine smooth interaction and group functioning. Hence, all value analyses mention conformity. Conformity values lay stress upon self-restraint in everyday interaction, usually with close others
Characteristics: obedient, self-discipline, politeness, honoring parents and elders
(8) Tradition
Objective: Respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that one's culture or religion provides
Groups, everywhere, develop practices, symbols, ideas, and beliefs that represent their shared experience and fate. These become sanctioned as valued group customs and traditions. They symbolize the group's solidarity, express its unique worth, contribute to its survival and ensure longevity. Religious rites and beliefs are examples of tradition values
Characteristics: respect for tradition, humble, devout, accepting one’s portion in life
(9) Benevolence
Objective: Preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom one is in frequent personal contact
The basic requirement for progress is, that any group should function smoothly. Benevolence values ensure this aspect. Most important are relations within the family and other primary groups. Benevolence values emphasize voluntary concern for others' welfare
Characteristics: helpful, honest, forgiving, responsible, loyal, true friendship, mature love
(10) Universalism
Objective: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature
Universalism values are important to satisfy survival needs of individuals and groups. People do not recognize these needs, until they encounter others beyond the extended primary group and/or, until they become aware of the scarcity of natural resources. When such interactions happen, failure to accept others may lead to life-threatening strife. Also, failure to protect the natural environment will lead to the destruction of the resources on which life depends
Characteristics: Open mindedness, tolerance
1.3 Measurement of values
The Schwartz Value Survey
The first instrument developed to measure values based on the theory, is now known as the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS). The SVS presents two lists of value items. The first contains 30 items, that describe potentially desirable end-states in noun form; the second contains 26 or 27 items, that describe potentially desirable ways of acting in adjective form. Each item expresses an aspect of the motivational goal of one value. An explanatory phrase in parentheses, following the item further, specifies its meaning. For example, 'EQUALITY (equal opportunity for all)' is a universalism item; 'PLEASURE (gratification of desires)' is a hedonism item. Respondents rate the importance of each value item "as a guiding principle in MY life", on a 9-point scale, labeled 7 (of supreme importance), 6 (very important), 5, 4 (unlabeled), 3 (important), 2, 1 (unlabeled), 0 (not important), -1 (opposed to my values).
The Portrait Values Questionnaire
The Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) is an alternative to the SVS, developed in order to measure the ten basic values in samples of children from age 11, of the elderly, and of persons not educated in Western schools, that emphasize abstract, context-free thinking. The SVS had not proven suitable to such samples. Equally important, to assess whether the values theory is valid, independent of method, required an alternative instrument.
The PVQ includes short verbal portraits of 40 different people, gender-matched with the respondent. Each portrait describes a person's goals, aspirations, or wishes that point implicitly to the importance of a value. For example: "Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to him. He likes to do things in his own original way", describes a person for whom self-direction values are important. "It is important to him to be rich. He wants to have a lot of money and expensive things", describes a person who cherishes power values.
For each portrait, respondents answer: "How much like you is this person?” Responses are: very much like me, like me, somewhat like me, a little like me, not like me, and not like me at all. We infer respondents' own values from their self-reported similarity to people described implicitly in terms of particular values. Respondents are asked to compare the portrait to themselves, rather than themselves to the portrait. Comparing other to self directs attention only to aspects of the other that are portrayed. So, the similarity judgment is also likely to focus on these value-relevant aspects.
The designers of the European Social Survey (ESS) chose the theory and the PVQ as the basis for developing a human values scale to include in the survey. The ESS version includes 21 items, most from the PVQ and a few revised to encompass additional ideas, in order better to cover the content of the ten different values. Across 20 representative national samples, Alpha reliabilities of the values with this version averaged .56, ranging from .36 (tradition) to .70 (achievement). These reliabilities reflect the fact that only two items measure each value (three for universalism). Equally important, given the constraint of so few items, the decisive factor in selecting items was to maximize coverage of the varied conceptual components of each value, rather than to increase internal reliability. Despite low reliabilities, these values predict behavior and attitudes systematically.
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