CONGRESO IBEROAMERICANO DE QUÍMICA Y XXIV CONGRESO PERUANO DE QUÍMICA

One of the important elements in positive psychology is the conceptualisation of the good life, which inevitably involves the question of whether holding onto values helps in enhancing life. Past research has supported the idea that those who lead their life based on important values bring positive consequences to themselves and other people within the community, including well-being (e.g. Chan & Joseph, 2000; Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000; Sheldon, 2005). However, not all values promote well-being. According to Bilsky and Schwartz (1994), values are based on either ‘growth needs’ or ‘deficiency needs’. The more importance placed on values representing growth needs (e.g. achievement, benevolence), the greater subjective well-being will be.

On the other hand, the more people attribute importance to values that emphasise compensation of deprivation or deficiency needs (e.g. power, security), the more they have to handle other associated goals before they can reach their goals, thus leaving them very likely to experience lower subjective well-being (Hofer, Chasiotis & Campos, 2006). Values that

represent growth needs are also identified as ‘healthy values’, whilst values that represent deficiency needs are often considered ‘unhealthy’ values (Sagiv & Schwartz, 2000). This could probably link with the results from Kasser and Ryan’s (1993) study that individuals who placed higher importance on goals concerning extrinsic rewards than goals regarding intrinsic rewards, tended to have lower wellbeing.

Sagiv and Schwartz (2000) extended the research interest in well-being by conducting two studies which aimed at: (1) investigating relations between value priorities and both cognitive and affective aspects of subjective well-being, and (2) examining how situational opportunities for realising values may moderate the relations of value priorities to subjective well-being. A set of questionnaires that comprised of the Schwartz Values Inventory (Schwartz, 1992), and three indicators of subjective well-being that measures life satisfaction, affect level, and mental health in general, were used in this study. Data were gathered from 583 students and 678 adults from Israel, West Germany and East Germany.

Results showed a significant positive relationship between achievement values and subjective well-being in every one of the six samples (r =.22, in the averaged sample). Self- direction (r=.16, average) and stimulation values (r=.12, average) correlated positively with subjective well-being, though not all of them were significant. On average, only traditional values displayed a significant negative correlation with subjective well-being (r= -.15, average). Stimulation, self-direction and achievement showed the same pattern to positive affect (r ranged from .10 to .13, average); whilst, security, conformity, and tradition correlated negatively (r ranged from -.08 to -.13, average). Nevertheless, further findings revealed that none of the value types correlated significantly with the cognitive aspect of well-being in the averaged sample, suggesting that value priorities and satisfaction with life do not vary together across situations. Sagiv and Schwartz (2000) concluded that basic value priorities associated with the affective component of subjective well-being only.

In Sagiv and Schwartz’s (2000) second study, it was assumed that the congruence between the person’s value priorities and the values prevailing in the environment contribute much to well-being. In order to test the hypothesis, researchers examined the effects of the congruence between students’ values and prevailing value culture in the university department. Forty two students from the psychology department and 40 from the business administration department participated in the study. It was presumed that, on average, psychology students would attribute greater importance to benevolence and universalism values than did business students; whereas business students would attribute greater importance to power and achievement values. The results confirmed the predictions which had led the researchers into examining the correlations between emphasising values importance to these students and subjective well-being. As predicted, business students’ relative attribution of high importance to power and achievement value congruence correlated with a higher sense of well-being. However, the correlations were very weak for universalism and benevolence values, though in a positive direction; and achievement values did not correlate with subjective well-being. The researchers suggested that homogeneity of the business students sample that entirely ongoing in business and economics imposed the students much with power and achievement values.

In contrast, the fact that psychology students had a variety of second majors could lend an explanation to weaker findings in the sample. As students were exposed to the different courses of their second majors, they might have received varied inputs that to some extent had an impact on their way of looking at things. Thus, there was a possibility that this group of students placed higher importance on values other than those hypothesised (benevolence and universalism), and their subjective well-being might have depended on realising those values which accounted for the weaker findings in the sample. Sagiv and Schwartz in their conclusion emphasised the need to have deeper understanding of the environment of where samples are taken from, as it may contribute to the values of those samples. They further commented that

the notion of ‘healthy’ vs. ‘unhealthy’ values should be consciously interpreted according to the culture that prevails in the sample.

Tartavkovsky and Schwartz (2001) studied the relationships between motivation, values and well-being among 158 potential Jewish emigrants from Russia. Results showed significant correlations between motivations to emigrate and the four higher-order values; openness, embeddedness, self-enhancement and self-transcendence, whereby, preservation correlated positively with embeddedness values, and negatively with openness values. However, self-development motivation correlated positively with openness values, and negatively with embeddedness values. Materialism correlated positively with self- enhancement values, and negatively with self-transcendence values. It was found that preservation motivation was linked to poorer subjective wellbeing – negatively correlated with general mental health, and positively correlated with normlessness, and powerlessness.

The researchers suggested that those inclined to emigrate based on preservation motivation tend to feel anxious, insecure, unable to predict or control the course of their lives, and uncertain of the normative order. Emigration due to self-development motivation correlated positively to general mental health and negatively to loneliness. There were no correlations at all with powerlessness and normlessness, as indices of social alienation. The researchers assumed that high self-confidence, low anxiety and low dependence on others explained these findings. In contrast, materialism motivation correlated with both forms of social alienation, powerlessness and normlessness, and not with the more psychological aspects of wellbeing, which suggested individuals who felt like to emigrate for financial reasons, could probably perceive the disorganised societal conditions, such as lack of order, trust, control, and predictability, hindered opportunities for self-advancement. The researchers further suggested that future research should investigate the role of personality in order to have a better understanding of this phenomenon.

Chan and Joseph (2000) investigated the associations between personality, self-relevant intrinsic and extrinsic values and expectations, and psychological wellbeing in a sample of 107 students at the University of Essex, England. It was found that extraversion positively correlated, and neuroticism negatively associated, with happiness, self-actualisation and self- esteem. However, the contribution of personality towards wellbeing was considered small, as those personality variables did not account for more than 30 percent of the variance in well- being. On the other hand, the Aspiration Index explained more than 30 percent of the variance of happiness, 41 percent of self-esteem, and 53 percent of the variance on self-actualisation. Interestingly, psychoticism was found to be associated with higher scores on self-actualisation, which was not aligned with the previous findings. The researchers’ assumption was that those individuals who were high in psychoticism had probably been readily imposed to intrinsic values more than those who were low or less ‘psychotic’. Nevertheless, it was later suggested that these data needed to be replicated.

The effect of materialism on well-being has been studied by Karabati, Serdar and Cemalcilar (2010). They investigated the extent to which materialism, which is normally seen as a defining element of Western culture, could mediate the relationship between values and wellbeing among Turkish university students, who were believed to be more individualistic compared to Turkish society in general. The findings revealed materialism produced negative effects on wellbeing. However, direct and mediator effects between values and well-being are not clearly understood, as mixed results were produced.

In conclusion to the studies discussed above, individuals who live by their important values have a high wellbeing, providing that they live in a community or culture in which the same values prevail. In a society that promotes values concerning freedom in the making of choices for self-development (e.g. self-direction, stimulation), placing priority on such values is often associated with the high well-being of the people in that society. Thus, the values are

often known as ‘healthy values’. However, people of the same society who place high importance on embeddedness values (e.g. tradition, security) are more likely to have a low wellbeing. Therefore, in this society embeddedness values are considered as ‘unhealthy values’. Apart from the situational factors, the personality factor has been mentioned as playing an important role in determining one’s well-being. In this research, the relations between values important and satisfaction, personality, and well-being will be further examined.