The Psychology Of Values

The eighth Ontario Symposium brought together an international group of scholars who work in the area of the psychology of values. Among the categories these experts address are the conceptualizations of values, value systems, and value-attitude-behavior relations; methodological issues; the role of values in specific domains, such as prejudice, commitment, and deservingness; and the transmission of values through family, media, and culture. Each chapter in the volume illustrates both the diversity and vitality of research on the psychology of 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.

The book provides conceptual and theoretical elaborations on human values from a cultural psychological approach. The authors illustrate their original contributions with empirical data, allowing for productive discussion on the topic of ontogenesis of values from a historical-cultural perspective.

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.

Although a growing number of researchers emphasize the social and psychocultural aspects of motivation and motivation theory, few books have provided much coverage beyond well-tread studies of physiological and biological factors and theories. Motivation and Culture brings together eighteen writers with a variety of academic backgrounds and cultural experiences to explore the way that culture impinges on motivation. Exploring topics such as personal values and motives, intercultural exchange in the workplace, the intrapsychic process and the nexus between biology and culture, they formulate theories of motivation that can be applied in the modern multicultural world. Contributors include: Dona Lee Davis, Russell Geen, Joan Miller, John Paul Scott, William Wedenoja, Elisa J. Sobo and Stephen Wilson.

What are values? How are they different from attitudes, traits, and specific goals? How do our values influence our behavior, and vice versa? How does our culture and environment impact the relationship between values and behavior? These questions and more are rigorously examined by prominent and emerging scholars in this significant volume Values and Behavior: Taking A Cross Cultural Perspective. Personal values are cognitive representations of abstract, desirable motivational goals that guide the way individuals select actions, evaluate people and events, and explain their actions and evaluations. The unique features of values have implications for their impact on behavior. People are highly satisfied with their values and perceive them as close to their ideal selves. At the same time, however, daily interpersonal interaction reveals that individuals hold different, sometimes opposing, value profiles. These individual differences are even more apparent when individuals from different cultures interact. The collected chapters address the links between values and behavior from a cultural perspective. They review studies conducted in various cultures and discuss culture as a moderator of the relationships between values and behavior. Structurally, part I of the volume discusses what values are and how they should be measure; part II then examines the contents of the relationships between values and behavior in different life-domains, including prosocial behavior, aggression, behavior in organizations and relationships formation. Part III explores some of the moderating mechanisms that relate values to behavior. Taken together, these chapters review and synthesize over twenty years of research on values and behavior, and propose new insights that have important implications for both research and for practice.