Social and Moral Values

Individual and Societal Perspectives

Nancy Eisenberg, Janusz Reykowski, Ervin Staub

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315534954
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1989, this joint venture of American and Polish psychologists provides an international perspective on the psychological factors that make people attend to the well-being of others and of society. The individual sections focus on: theoretical perspectives in the nature of values; the development of positive values; the place of values in various types of decisions; the regulation of behaviors through values and the relation of values to behavioral outcomes; and sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and historical perspectives on values.

Part 1
Values: General Theoretical Perspectives

1 Values from the Perspective of Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory

Seymour Epstein
University Massachusetts at Amherst

For over a decade I have been working on the development of a unified theory of personality that I refer to as Cognitive-experiential Self-theory (e.g., Epstein, 1973, 1976, 1979a, 1980, 1981, 1983a, 1985, in press a, in press b; Epstein & Erskine, 1983). The theory integrates various aspects of different theories of personality, including psychoanalytic theories, behavioral theories, phenomenological theories, existential theories, and cognitive theories, at least insofar as they can be combined without doing violence to the coherence of the overall theory. As my aim is to construct a complete theory, it became an interesting challenge to determine how well it could account for phenomena referred to by constructs that do not appear in my own theory. Values is one such construct. Although values occupy a position of central importance in social psychology, they are not often referred to in personality theories. This state of affairs suggests either an important omission in most personality theories, my own included, or that the phenomena that social psychologists use values to explain are explained otherwise by personality theorists. An examination of values from the perspective of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory has the potential of both extending the theory and contributing something of significance to an understanding of values.

This article is divided into three sections. The first consists of an analysis of the nature of values, the second of a review of relevant aspects of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory, and the third of an exploration of the implications of the latter for the former.

The Nature of Values

Values are beliefs about desirability that organize experience and direct behavior with respect to certain broad classes of events. Thus, if I value achievement, I believe achievement is desirable, and I therefore attend to events related to achievement, remember events related to achievement, and behave in ways related to achievement. Concepts somewhat similiar to values are goals and motives. A goal is the object of a motive, and, because it is desired, is also something that is valued. Thus, in a broad sense, goals, values, and motives account for similar phenomena and, within limits, are interchangeable. Motives imply goals and goals imply motives. Neither can exist without the other. Motives emphasize the person part of the person-situation interaction, whereas goals emphasize the situation part of the interaction. Values, like goals, usually emphasize situational characteristics, but they also imply attributes of the person with reference to the situations.

Personality psychologists are concerned primarily with motives and social psychologists with values. Is there a need for both concepts, or is the use of the terms simply a matter of preference? Typically, values refer to broad, socially significant constructs, such as freedom and equality, and motives to more narrowly defined realms, such as sex and aggression, which may or may not have a physical basis. However, there is a middle ground in which the two overlap. Included are constructs such as achievement, power, and affiliation. One can speak of achievement, power, and affiliative motives as well as of valuing achievement, power, and affiliation. There is no theoretical significance in the consideration that values generally refer to wider ranging phenomena than motives, as there is no reason why one could not extend motives to include broader variables and values to include narrower variables. Values, no less than motives, are often operationalized by tests of preference. Thus, if in a free choice situation, an animal or person consistently selected a sex object over a food object, it would be as meaningful to say that the person or animal valued sex more than food as it would be to say that he, she, or it had a stronger sex than hunger motive. By the same token, one could say that a person who values freedom or equality is motivated to support the cause of freedom or equality. Thus far, no theoretically meaningful distinction has been found between motives and values. Yet there is an important distinction, one that points to a serious limitation in the concept of values, at least as it has been traditionally employed.

Consider the following example. If I am motivated to be aggressive, does it necessarily mean that I place a positive value on aggression? Clearly it does not, for a person who detects aggressive tendencies in his or her behavior may be disturbed by the observation precisely because he or she places a negative valuation on aggression. What is the explanation of why the two concepts, value and motivation, diverge in this case, whereas they converged in the other examples? The answer is that in the present example different levels of the response are involved. At one level the person is motivated to be aggressive, whereas at another the person is oppositely motivated. Alternatively, it could be said that at one level the person positively values aggression, but at another level the person negatively values aggression. This may appear awkward, because social psychologists have tended to assume that values are all of a piece. Thus, when verbal reports and behavioral inferences diverge, social psychologists are prone to assume that the two indexes depart from a single true value because of error of measurement, rather than considering the possibility that different conceptual systems exist at different levels, each with its own values. To the extent that the assumption of two systems is correct, it has important implications for the prediction of behavior from values, for the systems may be differentially related to behavior. As will be seen shortly, one of the systems is assumed to be more closely associated with behavioral and emotional responses and the other with verbal responses.

It might be argued that the problem can be resolved by defining values as existing solely within the verbal system. In support of such a solution is the consideration that values are usually measured in social psychological research by self-report measures. The problem with such a solution, although theoretically defensible, is that the usefulness of values for predicting behavior would then be very limited, and, further, it would not be very convincing, as indicated by the following example. Consider a person who devotes his or her life to accumulating great wealth, freely choosing to engage in this pursuit, and then using the wealth for no purpose other than to hoard it. How meaningful would it be to conclude that such a person does not value wealth if he or she does not admit to valuing it? Clearly, values are important mainly for what they imply about a person's behavior, not for predicting his or her verbal statements.

Let us examine the same issue from another perspective. Consider that values include components of thought, behavior, and emotion. In the realm of thought, values are experienced in terms of desirable or undesirable, of how things should or should not be, of what is important or unimportant, and of the overall worth or "value" of an event or outcome. Because values are beliefs about desirability, they necessarily imply affect. Thus, when a value is upheld, it often produces feelings of joy and/or pride, and if another person is considered responsible, it often produces feelings of appreciation and/or admiration. Likewise, the assessment that a value has been violated is associated with feelings of dejection, shame, or guilt if the self is assumed to be responsible, and with feelings of anger if someone else is deemed responsible. In the realm of behavior, values are indicated either by preference in a free choice situation, or by how much an individual is willing to pay or sacrifice for the valued object, or, relatedly, by the amount of effort he or she is willing to exert to achieve the valued outcome.

Given that values are revealed by thoughts, emotions, and behavior, this raises the question of how to interpret results when the different indexes do not correspond. For example, what does it signify when a person reports that he or she values achievement but exhibits this not a whit in his or her daily behavior and is emotionally unresponsive to issues involving achievement? Because a great deal of research on values is based on direct self-report, which neither assesses emotions nor behavior, this issue is one of considerable importance. A common interpretation is that each index has its virtues and limitations, but all are manifestations of the same underlying construct, that is, there is presumably a true degree to which the person in the aforementioned has a latent value of achievement, which is but imperfectly reflected in each of the indexes, thereby accounting for differences in the obtained results. An alternative interpretation is that different values exist in different conceptual systems, and that the differences are therefore meaningful. We return to this issue when we discuss the implications of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory for an understanding of values.

Values clearly exist at various levels of generality. Although the word "value" is generally restricted to concepts referring to broad social interests, as already noted, there is no good theoretical reason why the concept should not be extended to include more narrowly defined variables. A complete theory of values should be able to outline the domain of values and to hierarchically arrange them with the broader values subsuming the narrower ones. As a beginning, it would be helpful to determine whether there exists a limited set of basic values that are common to all people. This would be analogous to the attempt in trait theory to identify basic traits, which, according to Eysenck (1970) consist of neuroticism, extroversion, and psychoticism, or egostrength. In factor-analytic terms, the basic traits correspond to higher order factors. It would be interesting to determine if there is some theoretical basis for establishing basic values. As becomes evident shortly, Cognitive-experiential Self-theory provides a hypothesis along these lines. Of course, if values exist within two different conceptual systems, the possibility must be considered that basic values may exist in one system and not in the other, or that they may differ in the two systems.

In summary, I am proposing that there is no fundamental difference between values and motives, and that once this is realized, it follows that, like motives, values can exist at different levels of awareness and can conflict with each other, not only within the same conceptual system but across different conceptual systems within the same individual.

Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory

For present purposes, a brief summary of Cognitive-experiential Self-theory will suffice. For the reader who wishes to learn more about the theory, a number of additional sources, some of which present a general summary (Epstein, 1973, 1983a) and others of which present specific aspects of the theory (Epstein, 1976, 1979a, 1980, 1981, in press a, in press b; Epstein & Erskine, 1983), can be consulted.

It is assumed that in order to function in the complex world of reality, humans must organize their experiences within an implicit, or preconscious, theory of reality that contains subdivisions of a self-theory and a world theory. An individual's implicit theory of reality is not a conscious theory that a person can report if asked to do so. It is a subconscious, or implicit theory that the individual unwittingly constructs in the course of living his or her life. The theory, like any other theory, consists of a hierarchical arrangement of higher and lower order beliefs, or schemas. The most fundamental beliefs in a personal theory of reality are referred to as postulates. Some of the postulates are descriptive beliefs about the self and the world. Other postulates are motivational beliefs that indicate what one should do to gain what one wishes and to avoid what one fears. An example of a descriptive postulate is "Authority figures are cruel and domineering." An example of a motivational postulate is "You can avoid being hurt by authority figures if you placate them."

The basic beliefs in a person's implicit theory of reality consist, for the most part, of generalizations inductively derived from emotionally significant experiences. The strength of such beliefs is a function of the intensity and frequency of the experiences from which the beliefs were derived, and the position of the beliefs in the hierarchy of the conceptual system. The greater the number and intensity of the experiences on which they are based and the more they are interrelated with other beliefs, the more the beliefs are resistant to modification. Postulates such as the ones described earlier could readily be derived from emotionally significant interactions with a father figure. Beliefs formed early in life are particularly important, as they become higher order postulates that influence the assimilation of new experiences and the development of new beliefs. This is not to deny that later experiences in life can have a profound influence on personality.

A person's preconscious theory of reality is a very significant part of a person's personality, but it is not the whole of personality, for personality also consists of biologically determined reactions and conscious beliefs that are intellectually derived. A personal theory of reality determines how a person automatically makes sense of experience and automatically reacts to the world. If a person's beliefs were to change at the preconscious level about what he or she and the world are like and how he or she should behave in it, the person would perceive differently, remember differently, feel differently, and behave differently. In other words, the person would be a different person. In order to cope with the world and preserve their identity, people must maintain the stability of their theories of reality. It can be expected, therefore, that people will do almost anything in their power to maintain the integrity of their conceptual systems, for the disorganization of a conceptual system is equivalent to the death of a personality.

The Four Basic Functions of a Personal Theory of Reality. The construction of a personal theory of reality is not an exercise undertaken for its own sake. Rather, the theory is a conceptual tool for fulfilling life's most basic psychological functions, namely, assimilating the data of reality within a relatively stable, coherent conceptual system; maintaining a favorable pleasure pain balance over the anticipated future: maintaining relationships with significant others and maintaining a favorable level of self-esteem. These four functions are not completely independent but overlap and interact with each other. Although some developmentally precede the others, once developed, they are equally important. Which function, if any, is dominant varies among individuals and within individuals over time. One individual may be predominantly characterized by a need to enhance self-esteem and another by a need to maintain the stability of his or her conceptual system. The former will be driven by a quest for prestige and the latter by an attempt to establish a secure and predictable environment. Under appropriate circumstances, each could shift to the position of the other. For example, should the stability of the former individual's conceptualization of self and world be seriously threatened, the need to maintain stability would likely become prepotent over the need to enhance self-esteem. In order to be we...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 Values: General Theoretical Perspectives
• Part 2 Development of Positive Values
• Part 3 Moral Decisions and Functioning of Moral Values
• Part 4 Values and the Regulation of Behavior
• Part 5 Sociopolitical, Socioeconomic, and Historical Views on Values
• Author Index
• Subject Index