How situational activation of values evokes positive and negative feelings: Theory and experimental findings

William Montgomery,Tommy Gärling,Henry Montgomery

doi:10.1007/s11031-020-09820-y

William Montgomery, Tommy Gärling + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09820-y

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Abstract

We propose a theory of how situational activation of values evokes positive and negative feelings. In conjunction we present a re-conceptualization of Schwartz’ et al. (J Personal Soc Psychol 103:663–688, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1037/a029393) value set including additional values. In our new value set, we posit contrastive values having opposite values and central values having no opposite values. As a consequence, balanced access to salient opposite contrastive values and maximal access to central values evoke the strongest positive and weakest negative feelings. Study 1 shows, as hypothesized, that contrastive values form a circumplex structure with central values located inside its periphery. Study 2 supports theoretically derived hypotheses of how positive and negative feelings are evoked by different degrees of access to values, salience of opposite values, and centrality of values.

Highlights

The complete matrix of mean compatibility ratings for each pair of values was submitted to multidimensional scaling (MDS) using the PROXSCAL procedure in SPSS
We propose that positive feelings decrease and negative feelings increase proportional to the distance between the degree of access to the value and the ideal point of access
Ideal points are estimated as the access level associated with the highest rating of positive feelings and the access level associated with the lowest rating of negative feelings for each value pair and participant

Summary

Introduction

For central values the ideal point for both positive and negative feelings is assumed to correspond to 100% access to the relevant value. To empirically test the theoretical propositions above, we collected ratings of the strength of positive and negative feelings for different levels of access to central or contrastive values.

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Results

Conclusion