Personality and Values

Personality and Values;

• Are they related?

• What is the framework on the association between the two?

• Does Personality explain values or opposite?

• What are values? • In general, values are important and enduring beliefs

or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or desirable and what is not. Values exert major influence on the behaviour of an individual and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.

• According to Oxford dictionary (2009): • Values are a person's principles or standards of

behaviour; one's judgment of what is important in life: they internalize their parents' rules and values.

• The articles that will be presented: • Bardi and Schwartz (2003): Values and Behavior:

Strength and Structure of Relations • Parks & Guay (2009): Personality, Values and

Motivation • McCrae and Sutin (2009): Openness to Experience. In

M. R. Leary and R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behavior (pp. 257-273)

• Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz and Knafo (2002): The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

Values according to Roccas et al. (2002) 1

• Values are cognitive representations of desirable, abstract goals (e.g., security, justice) (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992). Similar to needs, motives, and goals, values motivate actions (Rohan, 2000; Seligman, Olson, & Zanna, 1996). Values differ from specific goals (Emmons, 1989; King, 1995; Roberts & Robins, 2001; Winnel, 1987) because values are trans-situational.

• Unlike needs and motives (Bilsky, 1998; McClelland, • 1985), values are inherently desirable and must be

represented in ways that enable people to communicate about them.

Values according to Roccas et al. (2002) 2

• Value theory developed by Schwartz (1992) • Values as desirable, transsituational goals that

vary in their importance as guiding principals in people’s lives.

• 10 different values depending on type of motivational goal:

• Power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity, security.

Values according to Roccas et al. (2002) 3

• the ten distinguish values and the structure of their relations have been verified (Schwartz, 1992; Schwartz & Sagiv, 1995; unpublished data).

• The set of 10 values has been used to explain a wide variety of attitudes, behaviors, and subjective states across many nations (see Schwartz & Bardi, 2001).

Personality and values - are they related?

• several differences between personality and values • Values: what we believe we ought to do• Personality: what we naturally tend to do• Personality traits do not conflict with one another (i.e.

simultaneously expressing Extraversion and Conscientiousness)

• Values do conflict (some are chased at the cost of other)• recent papers:

– Roccas et al (2002): FFM and Values– Parks & Guay (2009): Personality, values, and motivation– McCrae & Sutin (2009): NEO-PI-R facet O6: values

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Research done by Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz and Knafo• The researchers relate Big Five personality traits to basic

values

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Hypotheses:– Set of Hypotheses which relate every Big Five factor to

values– each factor is compatible with some values and

incompatible with others

• Methodology: sample of 246 Israeli students (M age 22, 65 % women) completing questionnaires

• Instruments: – Expanded Schwartz (1992) Value Inventory– NEO-PI translated into Hebrew and abbreviated by Montag

& Lewin (1994)

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Results Extraversion:

– Circular order correlation: 0.93

0.31

0.26

0.18

-0.29

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Results Openness to experience:

– Circular order correlation: 0.89

0.48

0.33

-0.34-0.29

-0.38

0.47

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Results Agreeableness:

– Circular order correlation: 1.00

-0.41

0.36

0.45-0.45

0.20

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Results Conscientiousness:

– No circular correlation (dual motivation traits)

0.22

0.22

0.16

-0.24

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

• Neuroticism shows low correlations• Relations to religiosity and positive affect– Values relate strongly to religiosity, weakly to positive affect– Personality relates vice versa

• Distinction of proactive and inhibitive aspects of Conscientiousness

• Motivations blend into another• Motivational goals form a circular continuum

(Schwartz, 1992)

Personality, values, and motivation

• review done by Parks & Guay• constructs of personality and values have

been reviewed• personality and values have different

influences on different motivational processes• (untested) model how personality and values

influence motivation

Personality, values, and motivation

p. 678

Personality, values, and motivation

p. 682

Proposed model:

The best way to think about values

• McCrae and Sutin, 2009 o Openness to experienceo O’s social consequences

“Openness affects social perceptions…the information of social attitudes, the choice of friends and spouses, political activity and cultural innovation.” (p. 1)

The best way to think about values

• Bardi and Schwartz, 2003:

o Explore the relation between values and common behaviours: ‘value-expressive behaviour’

o Stimulation and tradition values correlate most strongly with expected behaviours, and conformity, achievement and security least strongly

• Bardi and Schwartz, 2003:o Most behaviour expresses more than one value

BEHAVIOURVALUE BEHAVIOUR

VALUEVALUE BEHAVIOUR

• Bardi and Schwartz, 2003:oMore likely to influence decisions in choice-

behaviour, eg from a conscious decision, rather than spontaneous behaviour

o Correlations between values and behaviour are weakened when social/normative pressure is stronger.

The best way to think about values?

• Behaviour which expresses motivational goals and normative pressures, and in turn affects our social perceptions, interactions and choices.

SUMMARY• Values influence what we “ought” to do.• Traits influence what we naturally tend to do.• Values and Personality Traits can be seen to interact (Roccas et al. – 2002) in

a way which makes sense, i.e. Extraversion with stimulation, hedonism & achievement.

• Both values and traits have a role in goal accomplishment-accomplishing a goal = striving for it, the level and manner in which we strive is down to traits, the content of goals can be determined by values (Parks & Guay – 2009)

• The trait Openness can be seen to contribute to values held – it effects social choices, which can lead to value development (McCrae & Sutin – 2009)

• Values and Behaviour can be seen to interact (Bardi & Schwartz – 2003) . Values seem to be more likely to influence deliberated decisions, rather than spontaneous ones (which can be put down to traits)

• A value can end up expressing multiple behaviours, and multiple values can interact to express a single behaviour.

FUTURE RESEARCH

• From Parker & Guay (2009)- Research into self-set goals versus assigned goals, and how values effect this.

“If values are related to the goals that individuals choose to pursue independently, they may also be related to commitment to goals set by others”

• this can be used to investigate how to increase commitment to assigned goals (such as coursework, presentations, etc.) to levels akin to self-set goals (achieving the 256th level, eating all that pizza by yourself, etc. . .)

• Which has obvious implications in the workplace and education.

FUTURE RESEARCH CONT.

• From Roccas et al. (2002)- Future research needs to help establish any cross-cultural aspects of traits and values. If a consistent model is found, then traits and values could be seen to be a genetic or heritable part of ourselves.

• From Bardi & Schwartz (2003)- shift in methodology from retrospective and biased self-report to observer report in varied settings over a long time, or a combination of the two.

RELATIONSHIP WITH POLITICS

• Presumably, then, if traits and values can be seen to be related, then can values and political inclination be linked? And does that mean that, ultimately, traits can influence political inclination through the gateway of values?

• Stay tuned.

References

• Bardi, A. & Schwartz, S. H. (2003). Values and behaviour: Strength and structure of relations. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 29, 1207-1220.

• Caprara, G. V., Schwartz, S., Capanna, C., Vecchione, M. & Barbaranelli, C. (2006). Personality and politics: Values, traits and political choice. Political Psychology, 27(1), 1-28.

• McCrae, R. R., & Sutin, A. R. (2009). Openness to experience. In M. R. Leary and R. H. Hoyle (Eds.), Handbook of Individual Differences in Social Behaviour (pp.257-273). New York: Guilford.

• Parks, L. & Guay, R. P. (2009). Personality, values and motivation. Personality and Individual Differences 47, 675-684.

• Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H. & Knafo, A. (2002). The big five personality factors and personal values. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 28, 789-801.