The Importance Given to Personal Values Depends on Whether you Focus on Social Desirability or Utility

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to answer the following question: What personal values are most important to people? Building on Dubois and Beauvois’ model of social value, I try to show that the prioritization of personal values depends on the evaluative focus (social desirability versus social utility) one adopts. In two studies (Ntotal = 2019) asking participants to judge Schwartz’s personal values when adopting the two different evaluative foci, the results showed that self-transcendence (self-enhancement) values were systematically judged as more socially desirable (socially useful) than self-enhancement (self-transcendence) ones, with openness-to-change and conservation falling in between. These results may help resolve inconsistencies observed in the literature between works showing a general preference for self-transcendence values and others pointing to the centrality of self-enhancement values in the functioning of capitalist societies.