Does Spontaneous Favorability to Power (vs. Universalism) Values Predict Spontaneous Prejudice and Discrimination?

Does Existential Flexibility Associate With Individuals' Acceptance of Inequality? A Study Relating Existential Questing to Values and to Prejudice

This study investigated whether existential quest, a relatively new construct defining individual willingness to reflect on existential issues such as the meaning of life and death, was negatively associated with generalized prejudice through the mediation with personal values of universalism and conservation (conformity, security, and tradition). A structural equation model was performed on a convenience sample of 1136 Italian adults. Results confirmed a negative indirect relationship with generalized prejudice mediated by universalism. Findings support the argument that engagement with existential issues is associated with the value of universalism, which in turn is associated with lower levels of generalized prejudice. The present study contributes to the scholarly literature to explain the concept of existential quest.

Does personality categorization affect intergroup attitudes via moderation of personal values and social identity complexity mediation?

BACKGROUND

Previous research indicated that social categorization increased intergroup attitude. The current study extended research on social categorization by adopting the multiple personality categorization concept to explore whether it would alter intergroup attitudes toward Muslims and Buddhists.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

Study 1 examined multiple personality category perceptions among Buddhist and Muslim students living in the troubled southern provinces. Participants were 382 Thai Buddhist and Muslims students of mean age 20.15 years (SD = 1.01). They took the multiple personality categorization perception scale on outgroup perceived personality. Study 2 evaluated a mediated social identity complexity and a moderated personal value in association between multiple personality categorization and intergroup attitudes. Participants were 150 Thai Buddhists and Muslim students of mean age 20.31 years (SD = 0.94). They took the scales of multiple personality categorization: short version, intergroup attitudes, social identity complexity, and personal values. Descriptive statistics, independent t-tests and SEM were used to test hypotheses.

RESULTS STUDY 1

Ten shared traits were identified (creative, smart, objective, talented, generous, kind, curious, resourceful, serious, skeptical) by both groups. This brought up awareness of similarity in shared personalities. Study 2: Multiple personality categorization and personal values were linked positively with intergroup attitudes. Personal values affected the links between multiple personality categorization and intergroup attitudes. However, social identity complexity as a mediator was nonsignificant.

CONCLUSIONS

Muslim and Buddhist students were stimulated to explore their similarity in personality traits. Educators and policy makers may use the findings on personal values and multiple personality categorization to plan long-term sustainable cooperation between Buddhists and Muslims.

Understanding motivation for implementing cooperative learning methods: a value-based approach

The implementation of cooperative learning methods remains disparate in primary schools despite their widely recognised benefits. To explain this paradox, we first examined whether teachers’ inclination towards cooperative methods is motivated by their values. Second, we tested whether motivational connections between personal values and cooperative methods are undermined when conflictual values are activated in context. Study 1 demonstrated that pre-service teachers strongly endorsed self-transcendence (ST) values (expressing compatible motivations with cooperation) relative to self-enhancement (SE) values (expressing conflictual motivations with cooperation). Adherence to ST values was also positively associated with their beliefs and attitudes regarding cooperative methods. In Studies 2, 3 and 4, educational sciences students were experimentally exposed to different contexts, wherein ST, SE or neutral values were promoted. Our findings indicate that when SE values were emphasised in the context, the positive association between ST values and beliefs/attitudes regarding cooperative methods disappeared. Although the results of Study 4 regarding the intention to use cooperative methods were not statistically significant, the pattern was similar. Finally, Study 5 showed that primary school teachers’ ST values positively predicted the self-reported use of cooperative methods when they perceived their school to weakly endorse SE values, but not when they perceived it to strongly endorse them.

The Perception of Family, City, and Country Values Is Often Biased

People often make inferences about the values of other people in their families, cities, and countries, but there are reasons to expect systematic biases in these inferences. Across four studies ( N = 1,763), we examined people’s perceptions of the values of their families, fellow citizens of the cities in which they live, and compatriots across three nations (Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom). Our results show that people systematically misperceive comparison groups’ values. People underestimate the importance that their compatriots ascribe to more important values and overestimate the importance of less important values. This occurs in comparison with their own values, the actual values of the people living in the same city and the actual values of their compatriots. The effect sizes were medium to large. Furthermore, the results occurred independently of participants’ culture, time spent in the culture, and the underlying value model used. These results consistently show that people’s speculations about values in their community and society are biased in a self- and family favoring direction. In addition, we found that the structure of values (e.g., as proposed by Schwartz) holds for perceived family, fellow citizens of the cities in which they live, and compatriots’ values. Overall, our findings suggest that the values of other people are more selfless than is often believed.

Measuring automatic value orientations: The Achievement-Benevolence Implicit Association Test

The construct and criterion validity of an Implicit Association Test designed to rate the importance ascribed to Achievement-Benevolence oriented goals (AB-IAT) according to Schwartz's model were investigated. In a first study (N = 113), the AB-IAT and three other value-IATs (Power-Universalism, Security-Self-direction, and Tradition-Stimulation) were administered along with the corresponding self-report scales. The AB-IAT showed the following: (1) an adequate internal consistency; (2) a small correlation and a different pattern of means with respect to the corresponding self-report scale; (3) a pattern of correlations with the other value-IATs that is consistent with Schwartz's model. In a second study (N = 99), results showed that (1) in contrast to self-report measures of values, the AB-IAT appeared unrelated to social desirability; (2) the AB-IAT was significantly correlated with an actual behaviour expressing Benevolence values; (3) in accordance with a double dissociation pattern of prediction, implicit and explicit values are best predictors of actual and self-rated behaviours, respectively. Overall, results of the studies support the construct and criterion validity of the AB-IAT. Moreover, they provide a first support for the generalizability of Schwartz's model in the realm of implicit social cognition, and for the applicability of dual-process models in value research.