The Psychology Of Human Values

This original and engaging book advocates an unabashedly empirical approach to understanding human values: abstract ideals that we consider important, such as freedom, equality, achievement, helpfulness, security, tradition, and peace. Our values are relevant to everything we do, helping us choose between careers, schools, romantic partners, places to live, things to buy, who to vote for, and much more. There is enormous public interest in the psychology of values and a growing recognition of the need for a deeper understanding of the ways in which values are embedded in our attitudes and behavior. How do they affect our well-being, our relationships with other people, our prosperity, and our environment? In his examination of these questions, Maio focuses on tests of theories about values, through observations of what people actually think and do. In the past five decades, psychological research has learned a lot about values, and this book describes what we have learned and why it is important. It provides the first overview of psychological research looking at how we mentally represent and use our values, and constitutes important reading for psychology students at all levels, as well as academics in psychology and related social and health sciences.

This original and engaging book advocates an unabashedly empirical approach to understanding human values: abstract ideals that we consider important, such as freedom, equality, achievement, helpfulness, security, tradition, and peace. Our values are relevant to everything we do, helping us choose between careers, schools, romantic partners, places to live, things to buy, who to vote for, and much more. There is enormous public interest in the psychology of values and a growing recognition of the need for a deeper understanding of the ways in which values are embedded in our attitudes and behavior. How do they affect our well-being, our relationships with other people, our prosperity, and our environment? In his examination of these questions, Maio focuses on tests of theories about values, through observations of what people actually think and do. In the past five decades, psychological research has learned a lot about values, and this book describes what we have learned and why it is important. It provides the first overview of psychological research looking at how we mentally represent and use our values, and constitutes important reading for psychology students at all levels, as well as academics in psychology and related social and health sciences.

Reflecting the contributions of M. Brewster Smith to social psychology and personality study, this selection includes not only his best known essays but also previously unpublished material. Professor Smith's consistent striving for a psychology both scientific and humane unifies the collection; it is a valid and valuable overview of the relevance of social psychology to human experience and societal problems by a man at the midstream of his career.An introductory essay traces the major themes in Professor Smith's work. Part I discusses the interdisciplinary relations of social psychology with other behavioral sciences; it shows that social psychology, standing at the crossroads of the social sciences, must articulate its contributions with those of the other disciplines, and it delineates the problems involved in this articulation. Part II presents the author's principal contributions to the social psychology of attitudes and values, a central topic in the field, in which he is a major proponent of the functional approach. Part III is devoted to the broader issues of personality theory, focusing on the "self" as the object of personal attitudes and including a classic paper on the phenomenological approach.Parts IV and V probe human effectiveness and "mental health," consider the social development of personal competence, and examine from a social psychological perspective a variety of social problems -foreign students and cross-cultural education, population growth, ethnic prejudice, and student protest. The final group of essays deals with perennial human concerns: the nature of rationality, the ethics of behavioral research, the psychology of literature, and the problems of evil.

Reflecting the contributions of M. Brewster Smith to social psychology and personality study, this selection includes not only his best known essays but also previously unpublished material. Professor Smith's consistent striving for a psychology both scientific and humane unifies the collection; it is a valid and valuable overview of the relevance of social psychology to human experience and societal problems by a man at the midstream of his career.An introductory essay traces the major themes in Professor Smith's work. Part I discusses the interdisciplinary relations of social psychology with other behavioral sciences; it shows that social psychology, standing at the crossroads of the social sciences, must articulate its contributions with those of the other disciplines, and it delineates the problems involved in this articulation. Part II presents the author's principal contributions to the social psychology of attitudes and values, a central topic in the field, in which he is a major proponent of the functional approach. Part III is devoted to the broader issues of personality theory, focusing on the "self" as the object of personal attitudes and including a classic paper on the phenomenological approach.Parts IV and V probe human effectiveness and "mental health," consider the social development of personal competence, and examine from a social psychological perspective a variety of social problems -foreign students and cross-cultural education, population growth, ethnic prejudice, and student protest. The final group of essays deals with perennial human concerns: the nature of rationality, the ethics of behavioral research, the psychology of literature, and the problems of evil.

This volume presents theoretical, methodological, and empirical advances in understanding, and also in the effects of understanding, individual and societal values.

Man has been pondering for centuries over the basis of his own ethical and aesthetic values. Until recent times, such issues were primarily fed by the thinking of philosophers, moralists and theologists, or by the findings of historians or sociologists relating to universality or variations in these values within various populations. Science has avoided this field of investigation within the confines of philosophy. Beyond the temptation to stay away from the field of knowledge science may also have felt itself unconcerned by the study of human values for a simple heuristic reason, namely the lack of tools allowing objective study. For the same reason, researchers tended to avoid the study of feelings or consciousness until, over the past two decades, this became a focus of interest for many neuroscientists. It is apparent that many questions linked to research in the field of neuroscience are now arising. The hope is that this book will help to formulate them more clearly rather than skirting them. The authors do not wish to launch a new moral philosophy, but simply to gather objective knowledge for reflection.

First Published in 1971, Human Values and the Mind of Man examines how value questions have been treated in traditional theories of human nature. The book presents an interdisciplinary dialogue centred around the 'human mind'.