Mattering at the Intersection of Psychology,Philosophy, and Politics

Mattering is an ideal state of affairs consisting of two complementary psychological experiences: feeling valued and adding value. Human beings can feel valued by, and add value to, self, others, work, and community. To make sure that the need for mattering is fulfilled, we must balance feeling valued with adding value. Moreover, we must balance adding value to self with adding value to others. Unfortunately, the dominant neoliberal philosophy does not support the values required to ensure the experience of mattering. Whereas a healthy and fair society would require equilibrium among values for personal, relational, and collective well-being, the dominant philosophy in many parts of the world favors personal at the expense of relational and collective values. Neoliberal economic and social policies have resulted in diminished sense of mattering for millions of people. Some people respond to cultural pressures to achieve higher status by becoming depressive or aggressive. Some marginalized groups, in turn, support xenophobic, nationalistic, and populist policies in an effort to regain a sense of mattering. To make sure that everyone matters, we must align the psychology, philosophy, and politics of mattering. The political struggle for a just and equitable distribution of mattering takes place in social movements and the policy arena. The perils and promises of these efforts are considered.     

The functional theory of human values: From intentional overlook to first acknowledgement—A reply to Schwartz (2014)

Schwartz has been aware of the Functional Theory of Values for over a decade. For the first time, Schwartz (2014) acknowledges the Gouveia theory and provides considerations based on the Gouveia, Milfont, and Guerra (2014) study. In this reply we present a historical overview of the development of the theory, noting unwarranted barriers to the publication of our work. We then address his comments, focusing on the theoretical innovations of the theory and remarking that recent refinements of Schwartz’s model were already evident in the Gouveia theory. Hypotheses tested in Gouveia et al. (2014) are also re-tested and supported with European Social Survey data using the Schwartz PVQ-21. We conclude by summarizing current projects that offer further opportunities to continue the theoretical debate.     

Symbioses Can Transcend Particularisms: A Memoir of Friendship with Ralph Wendell Burhoe

Ralph Burho's paradigmatic scientific innovation is the extension of the concept of symbiosis to coadapted human genotypes and "culturetypes," centered on religion. Civilization also requires a coexistent secular arena, where religion's nearness may help prevent our natural synergistic instrumentalizations of each other from degrading to losses of respect for one another as responsible free agents. The mixed messages in the Bible's diverse stories help to preserve a richness of choices in memory as we navigate history. We science-and-religion theorists should expand our cademic base to include economics, politics, literature, and other areas, while emulating Ralph's wise and good-humored ways of drawing us together and affecting our lives.     

The Use of Social Psychology in Rural Development? Two Readings of Rural Business Owners' Values

Rural development refers to diverse attempts being made to address the problems of rural communities. In Finland, rural development leans heavily on entrepreneurship and small business development. Rural development processes have a strong social psychological component that entails that psychological knowledge is crucial for rural development agents. Nevertheless, psychological knowledge has also been criticised for simplifying highly complex development processes and overstating the role of internal psychological factors. In this paper, we argue that, regarding the relevance and utility of psychological knowledge, the question is not only how extensively different factors are taken into account but also how knowledge about psychological factors is read and interpreted. In this paper, we focus on Finnish rural business owners' values and demonstrate that value survey data can be read from two different social psychological perspectives: those of substantialism and relationalism. Although data and the conducted analyses are kept constant, the two readings produce differing types of knowledge of rural business owners' values; one reveals what business owners ‘truly’ are like and the other informs how to best communicate with business owners. Both readings are potentially useful for rural development work. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Healing Faith: A Qualitative Exploration of Latina Breast Cancer Survivors

Latina cancer survivors report higher levels of distress and depression and lower levels of social quality of life and overall health‐related quality of life when compared with all other cancer survivors. Cultural values influence cancer survivorship; however, little research to date has examined how aspects of the Latina culture may be healing during the cancer journey. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to present findings from a qualitative study exploring the influence of culture on quality of life for Latina breast cancer survivors. The authors use consensual qualitative research to understand the lived experiences of Latina breast cancer survivors.     

Living in a Non‐Communist Versus in a Post‐Communist European Country Moderates the Relation Between Conservative Values and Political Orientation: A Multilevel Study

We performed a multilevel, multinational analysis using the 2012 European Social Survey dataset (N = 41 080, nested in 20 countries) to study how living in a non‐communist versus in a post‐communist country moderates the link between individual conservative values (drawn on Schwartz's theory of basic human values) and political orientation (assessed as self‐placement on the left–right axis and attitude towards economic redistribution). The results supported the moderating role of living in a non‐communist versus in a post‐communist country in the case both of political self‐placement and of attitude towards economic redistribution, even controlling for the countries' degree of individualism, power distance and democracy. Specifically, conservative values were positively related to a rightist political self‐placement among participants living in countries without a communist past, and to a favourable attitude towards economic redistribution in countries with a communist past. The limitations, implications and future directions of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Political involvement moderates the impact of worldviews and values on SDO and RWA

The Dual Process Model (DPM) of social attitudes and prejudice proposes that Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) reflect two distinct motivational processes. In two studies, we investigated how political involvement moderates the impact of social worldviews and value‐based dimensions on SDO and RWA. We proposed that political involvement constrains SDO, RWA and their antecedents into a tighter left–right ideological dimension, therefore transforming the double dissociation pattern of the DPM into a double additive pattern. As expected, for stronger political involvement, Study 1 (N = 237) showed that SDO and RWA were a function of both the competitive jungle and the dangerous world worldviews, whereas Study 2 (N = 143) pointed out that SDO and RWA were both connected with the value dimensions of self‐enhancement and conservation.     

Construct validity and construct equivalence of work values across boys and girls

This study investigated the structural validity and construct comparability, across boys and girls, of a newly developed measure of work values. The total sample was split into two equal parts, and based on an item-level factor analysis of the first sub-sample, fit statistics provided support for a six-factor first-order structural model with the following constructs: Power, Money, Tidy environment, Teamwork, Work–Family Balance and Ability Utilization. This structure was confirmed in the second sub-sample, and strict measurement invariance for the measurement model was obtained in this sample. Additionally, the factor variances/covariances were invariant. Five non-invariant latent means were found, with girls scoring higher on the Balance and Personal Challenge values, and boys scoring higher on the Power, Money and Teamwork values.     

Notes on the weighting biases in value trees

The variation in the structure of value trees can have undesirable effects on the attribute weights. Earlier experiments suggest that an attribute receives a higher weight if it is presented at an upper level in a value tree or if it is split into subattributes. Here we show that it is flawed to make conclusions about the biases at the individual level based on the averages of weights across large groups of subjects. Averages do not describe individual behavior. Furthermore, the averages of weights tend to approach even weights. By using the data from earlier experiments we illustrate how the averaging can produce different phenomena. We also show that the use of weights based on the rank order of attributes only can easily lead to biases when the structure of a value tree is changed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.