How Do Values Affect Behavior? Let Me Count the Ways.

The impact of personal values on preferences, choices, and behaviors has evoked much interest. Relatively little is known, however, about the processes through which values impact behavior. In this conceptual article, we consider both the content and the structural aspects of the relationships between values and behavior. We point to unique features of values that have implications to their relationships with behavior and build on these features to review past research. We then propose a conceptual model that presents three organizing principles: accessibility, interpretation, and control. For each principle, we identify mechanisms through which values and behavior are connected. Some of these mechanisms have been exemplified in past research and are reviewed; others call for future research. Integrating the knowledge on the multiple ways in which values impact behavior deepens our understanding of the complex ways through which cognition is translated into action.

Conceiving one's national group as transgenerational: Effects on attitudes towards 'foreign' and diaspora migrants.

The current paper presents three studies, which suggest that perceiving one's nation as transgenerational (TG) is related to a differentiation in the evaluation of ethnically German diaspora migrants and ethnically non-German ('foreign') migrants. First, we find that unlike 'classical' concepts such as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and hierarchic self-interest (HSI), TG explains differences in derogatory sentiments expressed towards diaspora and 'foreign' migrants. Second, TG is differentially related to positive emotions and behavioral intentions expressed towards these two groups of migrants. Lastly, results indicate that people who perceive the ingroup as TG require 'foreign' migrants to fulfill more criteria that make them eligible for citizenship and are thereby more exclusionist than people who include only the current generation into their concept of national identity. The social implications of these findings in face of the so-called refugee crisis in Germany and the wider European Union are discussed.

A look into the relationship between personality traits and basic values: A longitudinal investigation.

OBJECTIVE: The present study examines the longitudinal association between basic personal values and the Big Five personality traits. METHOD: A sample of 546 young adults (57% females) with a mean age of 21.68 years (SD = 1.60) completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire and the Big Five Questionnaire at three time points, each separated by an interval of 4 years. Cross-lagged models were used to investigate the possible reciprocal relations between traits and values, after the stability of the variables was taken into account. RESULTS: We found that values did not affect trait development. Traits, by contrast, have some effects on how values change. Specifically, high levels of Agreeableness predict an increase over time in the importance assigned to benevolence values. Similarly, high levels of Openness predict a later increase in the importance assigned to self-direction values. The same effect was not found for the other traits. Additionally, except for in the case of Emotional Stability, traits showed synchronous (i.e., within wave) correlations with values, suggesting that part of this relationship is due to common antecedents. CONCLUSIONS: Mechanisms underlying the associations between traits and values are discussed.

For the Sake of the Eternal Group: Perceiving the Group as Trans-Generational and Endurance of Ingroup Suffering.

We introduce the distinction between perceiving the group as Intra-Generational (IG; including only the present generation of group members) and Trans-Generational (TG; including all past, present, and future generations of the group). In four studies ( N = 1,265) administered to Jewish Israeli, Palestinian Israeli, American, and Swedish samples, we demonstrate that a tendency to perceive the group as TG is related to willingness to endure ingroup suffering and that this relationship is mediated by the degree to which the interest of the group as a whole is given primacy over the interest of the group as a collection of group members (Primacy of Interest). Furthermore, experimentally raising the salience of the group as TG leads to increased willingness to endure ingroup suffering as compared with raising the salience of the group as IG, and the effect of the TG salience manipulation is mediated by Primacy of Interest.

The Shadows of the Past: Effects of Historical Group Trauma on Current Intergroup Conflicts.

We examined associations between two orientations based on historical group trauma, a form of enduring group victimhood (Perpetual Ingroup Victimhood Orientation [PIVO]) and the belief that one's group might itself become a victimizer (Fear of Victimizing [FOV]), and attitudes, cognitions, and emotions related to intergroup conflicts. PIVO was positively and FOV was negatively related to aggressive attitudes and emotions toward the outgroup (Studies 1a-1c, Israeli-Palestinian conflict), and to the attribution of responsibility for a series of hostilities to the outgroup (Study 3, Israeli-Palestinian conflict). PIVO was negatively and FOV positively related to support for forgiveness and reconciliation (Study 2, Northern Ireland conflict). In Experimental Study 4, FOV predicted greater accuracy in remembering harm, regardless of victims' group identity, whereas PIVO was associated with reduced accuracy only when victims were Palestinians (outgroup members). Taken together, these findings indicate that both orientations have a significant impact on intergroup conflicts and their resolution.

Personal values in human life.

The construct of values is central to many fields in the social sciences and humanities. The last two decades have seen a growing body of psychological research that investigates the content, structure and consequences of personal values in many cultures. Taking a cross-cultural perspective we review, organize and integrate research on personal values, and point to some of the main findings that this research has yielded. Personal values are subjective in nature, and reflect what people think and state about themselves. Consequently, both researchers and laymen sometimes question the usefulness of personal values in influencing action. Yet, self-reported values predict a large variety of attitudes, preferences and overt behaviours. Individuals act in ways that allow them to express their important values and attain the goals underlying them. Thus, understanding personal values means understanding human behaviour.

Love versus loving criticism: Disentangling conventional and constructive patriotism.

We seek in three studies to better understand constructive patriotism by identifying perceptual and motivational factors that predict it above and beyond conventional patriotism and by examining one of its distinctive consequences (total n = 573). Study 1 (Polish students) shows that constructive patriotism is predicted by the perceived discrepancy between actual and ideal representations of the nation. Study 2 (Polish and Israeli students), which draws on Schwartz's theory of values, shows that constructive patriotism is negatively associated with the pursuit of self-interests. In Study 3 (Israeli adults), we broadened our investigation of constructive patriotism and conventional patriotism by examining the willingness to write examples of what constitutes a contribution to the nation, and analysed the content of these written statements. Individuals who scored higher on constructive patriotism wrote more examples, as well as more distinctive examples, of contributions to the nation. These findings provide the first empirical evidence for predictors and potential consequences of constructive patriotism that go beyond the love of one's nation.

Integrating content and structure aspects of the self: traits, values, and self-improvement.

Research on the structure of the self has mostly developed separately from research on its content. Taking an integrative approach, we studied two structural aspects of the self associated with self-improvement--self-discrepancies and perceived mutability--by focusing on two content areas, traits and values. In Studies 1A-C, 337 students (61% female) reported self-discrepancies in values and traits, with the finding that self-discrepancies in values are smaller than in traits. In Study 2 (80 students, 41% female), we experimentally induced either high or low mutability and measured perceived mutability of traits and values. We found that values are perceived as less mutable than traits. In Study 3, 99 high school students (60% female) reported their values, traits, and the extent to which they wish to change them. We found that values predict the wish to change traits, whereas traits do not predict the wish to change values. In Study 4, 172 students (47.7% female) were assigned to one of four experimental conditions in which they received feedback denoting either uniqueness or similarity to others, on either their values or their traits. The results indicated that feedback that one's values (but not traits) are unique affected self-esteem. Integrating between theories of content and structure of the self can contribute to the development of both.

Cultural Differences in Attitudes Toward Action and Inaction: The Role of Dialecticism.

The current research examined whether nations differ in their attitudes toward action and inaction. It was anticipated that members of dialectical East Asian societies would show a positive association in their attitudes toward action/inaction. However, members of non-dialectical European-American societies were expected to show a negative association in their attitudes toward action/inaction. Young adults in 19 nations completed measures of dialectical thinking and attitudes toward action/inaction. Results from multi-level modeling showed, as predicted, that people from high dialecticism nations reported a more positive association in their attitudes toward action and inaction than people from low dialecticism nations. Furthermore, these findings remained after controlling for cultural differences in individualism-collectivism, neuroticism, gross-domestic product, and response style. Discussion highlights the implications of these findings for action/inaction goals, dialecticism, and culture.

Don't judge a book by its cover, revisited: perceived and reported traits and values of attractive women.

Research has documented a robust stereotype regarding personality attributes related to physical attractiveness (the "what is beautiful is good" stereotype). But do physically attractive women indeed possess particularly attractive inner attributes? Studying traits and values, we investigated two complementary questions: how perceived attractiveness relates to perceived personality, and how it relates to actual personality. First, 118 women reported their traits and values and were videotaped reading the weather forecast. Then, 118 judges rated the traits, values, and attractiveness of the women. As hypothesized, attractiveness correlated with attribution of desirable traits, but not with attribution of values. By contrast, attractiveness correlated with actual values, but not actual traits: Attractiveness correlated with tradition and conformity values (which were contrasted with self-direction values) and with self-enhancement values (which were contrasted with universalism values). Thus, despite the widely accepted "what is beautiful is good" stereotype, our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence and for self-promotion rather than tolerance.

Identification with groups: the role of personality and context.

Is identification a product of personality or of the context? We examine this question by adopting a multidimensional conceptualization of identification (the CIDS model) that integrates research perspectives on personality and contextual effects. We investigate (Study 1) the relationships of traits to identification with the nation (students, N = 77), the army (soldiers, N = 220), and a business school (students, N = 123). Then we show that the modes of identification vary in their stability across social contexts and in their susceptibility to contextual change. Idealizing groups' symbols ("deference" identification) is especially stable across different foci of identification (Study 2): the military and former high school (soldiers, N = 188), the business school and the nation (students, = 62), and the military and one's ethnic group (soldiers, N = 95). Perceiving the group as a central part of the self ("importance" identification) is the most susceptible to contextual effects of priming values (Study 3; students, N = 80, 60) and the group's status (Study 4; students, N = 68).

Toward a unifying model of identification with groups: integrating theoretical perspectives.

Building on the contributions of diverse theoretical approaches, the authors present a multidimensional model of group identification. Integrating conceptions from the social identity perspective with those from research on individualism-collectivism, nationalism- patriotism, and identification with organizations, we propose four conceptually distinct modes of identification: importance (how much I view the group as part of who I am), commitment (how much I want to benefit the group), superiority (how much I view my group as superior to other groups), and deference (how much I honor, revere, and submit to the group's norms, symbols, and leaders). We present an instrument for assessing the four modes of identification and review initial empirical findings that validate the proposed model and show its utility in understanding antecedents and consequences of identification.

Perceiving intergroup conflict: from game models to mental templates.

This article puts forward a parsimonious framework for studying subjective perceptions of real-life intergroup conflicts. Four studies were conducted to explore how individuals perceive the strategic properties of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Studies 1 and 2 found theory-driven associations between people's subjective perception of the conflict's structure as a Chicken, Assurance, or Prisoner's Dilemma game and their ingroup/outgroup perceptions, national identification, religiosity, political partisanship, voting behavior, and right-wing authoritarianism. Studies 3 and 4 manipulated the saliency of the needs for cognitive closure and security, respectively, demonstrating that these needs affect people's endorsement of the game models as descriptions of the conflict.

The paradox of group-based guilt: modes of national identification, conflict vehemence, and reactions to the in-group's moral violations.

The authors examined the relationships between 2 modes of national identification (attachment to the in-group and the in-group's glorification) and reactions to the in-group's moral violations among Israeli students. Data were collected during a period of relative calm in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as during a period of great intensification of this conflict. As expected, in Study 1, the 2 modes of identification had contrasting relationships with group-based guilt: Attachment was positively related whereas glorification was negatively related to group-based guilt for in-group's past infractions. Glorification suppressed the attachment effect but not vice versa. Both relationships were mediated by the use of exonerating cognitions. In Study 2, group-based guilt for the in-group's current wrongdoings was increased by priming critical rather than conventional attachment to the in-group, suggesting a causal effect of mode of identification on the experience of negative group-based emotions.

Identification and status revisited: the moderating role of self-enhancement and self-transcendence values.

Two studies examined the moderating role of the importance attributed to self-enhancement and self-transcendence values on the association of group status with identification. In the first study, students reported their personal value priorities, their identification with a group, and their perception of the status of that group. The more importance respondents attributed to self-enhancement and the less importance to self-transcendence, the more their identification with a group depended on the group's status. In the second study, the salience of self-enhancement and of self-transcendence values was experimentally manipulated. Identification with a group depended more on the status of that group when self-enhancement values were salient than when self-transcendence values were salient.