The rank of a value in the importance hierarchy of values affects its relationship to self-concept: a SC-IAT study

Abstract

Using the single category implicit association test (SC-IAT), the present study investigated the relationship between self-concept and importance hierarchies of values. The results of a word-matching task showed that values ranked as high importance were correlated with self-descriptive words, as indicated by shorter reaction time and higher accuracy rate. By contrast, values rated as low importance were instead linked with other-descriptive words. This suggests that, at the level of implicit processing, values perceived as important are internalized to self-concept, and the degree of internalization or exclusion of values from self-concept is correlated with their ranking on an individual’s importance hierarchy of values. The above results provide novel evidence for the role of values in the structure and content of self-concept.