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The Situated Durability of Values

Advances in Group Processes

ISBN: 978-1-78743-193-5, eISBN: 978-1-78743-192-8

Publication date: 12 August 2017

Abstract

Purpose

This study engages an understudied presupposition that values are relatively impervious to situational pressures. We do this within a key sociological context, incorporating social status as a meso-level structure, by measuring values before and after a competition situation with an experimentally controlled outcome to determine the situational robustness of values.

Methodology/approach

We incorporate measures of values into a standard competition experiment, looking at how winning or losing and the status of the perceived competition influence peoples’ values.

Findings

Drawing on the well-established expectation states literature, we demonstrate that perceptions of gaining or losing a competition influence core values. Overall, positive, related situational feedback seemed to heighten all of the values-measures, while receiving (manipulated) negative, specific feedback dampened the rating of all values.

Research limitations

This is an initial exploration of the received wisdom; future work should involve different manipulations, wider arrays of values-measurement, and more diverse samples.

Practical implications

We hope that our interpretations of these results suggest how perceived status influences core internal experiences. The processes described have implications for the experiences of groups that win or lose political competitions, and other social interactions whereby people feel more or less affirmed in terms of their core beliefs.

Social implications

This suggests that individuals and groups who perceive themselves as winning competitions, elections, or challenges will feel affirmed in their core beliefs, and be more motivated to pursue those valued ends. People who perceive themselves as being situationally unsuccessful will feel a general dampening of these core beliefs.

Originality/value

This chapter is the first to link the internal study of values with the general expectation states tradition. It is exploratory, and results suggest this is a fertile area for future inquiry.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Mathew Andersson and Celeste Campos-Castillo for their feedback on earlier drafts.

Citation

Hitlin, S. and Civettini, N. (2017), "The Situated Durability of Values", Advances in Group Processes (Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 34), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 175-198. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0882-614520170000034008

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited