Paul Hanel

Do Student Samples Provide an Accurate Estimate of the General Public

Most psychological studies rely on student samples. Students are usually considered as more homogenous than representative samples both within and across countries. However, little is known about the nature of the differences between student and representative samples. This is an important gap, also because knowledge about the degree of difference between student and representative samples may allow to infer from the former to the latter group. Across 59 countries and 12 personality (Big-5) and attitudinal variables we found that differences between students and general public were partly substantial, incoherent, and contradicted previous findings. Two often used cultural variables, embeddedness and intellectual autonomy, failed to explain the differences between both groups across countries. We further found that students vary as much as the general population both between and within countries. In summary, our results indicate that generalizing from students to the general public can be problematic when personal and attitudinal variables are used, as students vary mostly randomly from the general public. Findings are also discussed in terms of the replication crisis within psychology.

Value Instantiations: The Missing Link Between Values and Behavior?

Value instantiations—exemplifiers of an abstract or general category—are a new issue in human value research. Experiments have recently highlighted the important role of value instantiations in bridging the gap between abstract values and specific actions. In this chapter, we describe the general role of category instantiations in psychology, drawing on relevant literature in cognitive and social psychology. We discuss the relevance of value instantiations to important topics in the study of values, such as (non-)differences in values between nations, and the application of values to behavior. We then discuss instantiations as a mechanism through which values are related to behavior. We demonstrate that instantiations moderate the relationship between values and behavior: If the measured behaviors reflect typical instantiations of a value, the relationship between the two is stronger. Finally, we illustrate the potential roles of value instantiations by describing a method for measuring them and then examining findings relevant to two values: protecting the environment and family security.

The Perception of Family, City, and Country Values Is Often Biased:

People often make inferences about the values of other people in their families, cities, and countries, but there are reasons to expect systematic biases in these inferences. Across four studies (N = 1,763), we examined people’s perceptions of the values of their families, fellow citizens of the cities in which they live, and compatriots across three nations (Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom). Our results show that people systematically misperceive comparison groups’ values. People underestimate the importance that their compatriots ascribe to more important values and overestimate the importance of less important values. This occurs in comparison with their own values, the actual values of the people living in the same city and the actual values of their compatriots. The effect sizes were medium to large. Furthermore, the results occurred independently of participants’ culture, time spent in the culture, and the underlying value model used. These results consistently show that people’s speculations about values in their community and society are biased in a self- and family favoring direction. In addition, we found that the structure of values (e.g., as proposed by Schwartz) holds for perceived family, fellow citizens of the cities in which they live, and compatriots’ values. Overall, our findings suggest that the values of other people are more selfless than is often believed.

Does Spontaneous Favorability to Power (vs. Universalism) Values Predict Spontaneous Prejudice and Discrimination

Abstract Objective We conducted five studies testing whether an implicit measure of favorability toward power over universalism values predicts spontaneous prejudice and discrimination. Method Studies 1 (N = 192) and 2 (N = 86) examined correlations between spontaneous favorability toward power (vs. universalism) values, achievement (vs. benevolence) values, and a spontaneous measure of prejudice toward ethnic minorities. Study 3 (N = 159) tested whether conditioning participants to associate power values with positive adjectives and universalism values with negative adjectives (or inversely) affects spontaneous prejudice. Study 4 (N = 95) tested whether decision bias toward female handball players could be predicted by spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values. Study 5 (N = 123) examined correlations between spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values, spontaneous importance toward power (vs. universalism) values, and spontaneous prejudice toward Black African people. Results Spontaneous positivity toward power (vs. universalism) values was associated with spontaneous negativity toward minorities and predicted gender bias in a decision task, whereas the explicit measures did not. Conclusions These results indicate that the implicit assessment of evaluative responses attached to human values helps to model value‐attitude‐behavior relations.

Cultural value orientations and alcohol consumption in 74 countries: A societal-level analysis

A significant proportion of all deaths globally can be attributed to alcohol consumption. Although a range of correlates of alcohol consumption have already been identified at the individual level, less is understood about correlates at the macro level, such as cultural values. As a development in this understanding may prove useful for global health organizations aiming to tackle the problems associated with excessive drinking, our aim was to investigate the association between encultured alcohol consumption and Cultural Value Orientations. We obtained data describing average alcohol consumption and Cultural Value Orientations, for 74 countries, from an online data repository. To assess whether Cultural Value Orientations are associated with alcohol consumption we calculated partial correlations and performed a ridge regression analysis. Our analyses revealed that Cultural Value Orientations were significantly associated with alcohol consumption, even after controlling for average income and education level. A profile emerged in which values of autonomy and harmony were shown to be positively associated with alcohol consumption, and hierarchy and embeddedness negatively associated with alcohol consumption. The effect was modified by gender. Changes in cultural Harmony, Mastery, Autonomy and Egalitarianism were associated with increases in alcohol consumption in males, but not females, while changes in cultural Embeddedness and Hierarchy were associated with decreases in consumption in females, but no change in males. Finally, we demonstrate that latitude, and by extension its covariates such as climatic demands, partially accounted for the effect of harmony and affective autonomy on alcohol consumption. This research highlights that cultural values, and their interaction with gender, should be an important consideration for international public health organizations aiming to tackle the problems associated with alcohol consumption, but that future research is required to fully understand the link between cultural values and alcohol.

Mapping the Structure of Human Values through Conceptual Representations: Mapping human values

The present research provides the first direct examination of human values through concept categorization tasks that entail judging the meaning of values. Seven studies containing data from nine samples (N = 1086) in two countries (the UK and Brazil) asked participants to compare the meaning of different values found within influential quasi–circumplex model of values. Different methods were used across experiments, including direct similarity judgment tasks, pile sorting, and spatial arrangement. The results of these diverse conceptual assessments corresponded to spatial configurations that are broadly convergent with Schwartzs model, both between and within participants.

Predictors of Citation Rate in Psychology: Inconclusive Influence of Effect and Sample Size

In the present article, we investigate predictors of how often a scientific article is cited. Specifically, we focus on the influence of two often neglected predictors of citation rate: effect size and sample size, using samples from two psychological topical areas. Both can be considered as indicators of the importance of an article and post hoc (or observed) statistical power, and should, especially in applied fields, predict citation rates. In Study 1, effect size did not have an influence on citation rates across a topical area, both with and without controlling for numerous variables that have been previously linked to citation rates. In contrast, sample size predicted citation rates, but only while controlling for other variables. In Study 2, sample and partly effect sizes predicted citation rates, indicating that the relations vary even between scientific topical areas. Statistically significant results had more citations in Study 2 but not in Study 1. The results indicate that the importance (or power) of scientific findings may not be as strongly related to citation rate as is generally assumed.

Need for Affect and Attitudes Toward Drugs: The Mediating Role of Values

ABSTRACT Human values and affective traits were found to predict attitudes toward the use of different types of drugs (e.g., alcohol, marijuana, and other illegal drugs). In this study (N = 196, Mage = 23.09), we aimed to gain a more comprehensive understanding of those predictors of attitudes toward drug use in a mediated structural equation model, providing a better overview of a possible motivational path that drives to such a risky behavior. Specifically, we predicted and found that the relations between need for affect and attitudes toward drug use were mediated by excitement values. Also, results showed that excitement values and need for affect positively predicted attitudes toward the use of drugs, whereas normative values predicted it negatively. The pattern of results remained the same when we investigated attitudes toward alcohol, marijuana, or illegal drugs separately. Overall, the findings indicate that emotions operate via excitement and normative values to influence risk behavior.

Sharing the Same Political Ideology Yet Endorsing Different Values: Left- and Right-Wing Political Supporters Are More Heterogeneous Than Moderates

Members of extreme political groups are usually perceived as more homogeneous than moderates. We investigated whether members of the general public who share the same political ideology would exhibit different levels of heterogeneity in terms of human values across 20 European countries and Israel. We directly compared the variability across moderate-, left-, and right-wing groups. Our findings suggest that the values of more extreme (left-wing or right-wing) supporters are usually more heterogeneous than those with more moderate views. We replicated this finding for politics-related variables such as attitudes toward immigrants and trust in (inter)national institutions. We also found that country-level variables (income, religiosity, and parasite stress level) did not moderate the pattern of value variability. Overall, our results suggest that endorsing the same political ideology is not necessarily associated with sharing the same values, especially in the case of common citizens holding extreme political attitudes.

Cross-Cultural Differences and Similarities in Human Value Instantiation

Previous research found that the within-country variability of human values (e.g., equality and helpfulness) clearly outweighs between-country variability. Across three countries (Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom), the present research tested in student samples whether between-nation differences reside more in the behaviors used to concretely instantiate (i.e., exemplify or understand) values than in their importance as abstract ideals. In Study 1 (N = 630), we found several meaningful between-country differences in the behaviors that were used to concretely instantiate values, alongside high within-country variability. In Study 2 (N = 677), we found that participants were able to match instantiations back to the values from which they were derived, even if the behavior instantiations were spontaneously produced only by participants from another country or were created by us. Together, these results support the hypothesis that people in different nations can differ in the behaviors that are seen as typical as instantiations of values, while holding similar ideas about the abstract meaning of the values and their importance.