In social psychology, social value orientation is a person's preference
about how to allocate resources between the self and another person. SVO
corresponds to how much weight a person attaches to the welfare of others in
relation to the own. Since people are assumed to vary in the weight they
attach to other peoples' outcomes in relation to their own, SVO is an
individual difference variable. The general concept underlying SVO has
become widely studied in a variety of different scientific disciplines, such
as economics, sociology, and biology under a multitude of different names.
Historical background The SVO construct has its history in the
study of interdependent decision making, i.e. strategic interactions between two
or more people. The advent of Game theory in the 1940s provided a formal
language for describing and analyzing situations of interdependence based on
utility theory. As a simplifying assumption for analyzing strategic
interactions, it was generally presumed that people only consider their own
outcomes when making decisions in interdependent situations, rather than
taking into account the interaction partners' outcomes as well. However, the
study of human behavior in social dilemma situations, such as the
Prisoner's dilemma, revealed that some people do in fact appear to have
concerns for others. In the Prisoner's dilemma, participants
are asked to take the role of two criminals. In this situation, they are
to pretend that they are a pair of criminals being interrogated by
detectives in separate rooms. Both participants are being offered a deal
and have two options. That is, the participant may remain silent or confess
and implicate his or her partner. However, if both participants choose to
remain silent, they will be set free. If both participants confess they will
receive a moderate sentence. Conversely, if one participant remains silent while
the other confesses, the person who confesses will receive a minimal
sentence while the person who remained silent will receive a maximum sentence.
Thus, participants have to make the decision to cooperate with or compete
with their partner. When used in the lab, the dynamics of
this situation are stimulated as participants play for points or for
money. Participants are given one of two choices, labeled option C or D. Option C
would be the cooperative choice and if both participants choose to be
cooperative then they will both earn points or money. On the other hand,
Option D is the competitive choice. If just one participants chooses option D,
that participant will earn points or money while the other player will lose
money. However, if both participant pick D, then both of them will lose money. In
addition to displaying participant's social value orientations, it also
displays the dynamics of a mixed-motives situation.
From behavior in strategic situations it is not possible, though, to infer
peoples' motives, i.e. the joint outcome they would choose if they alone could
determine it. The reason is that behavior in a strategic situation is
always a function of both peoples' preferences about joint outcomes and
their beliefs about the intentions and behavior of their interaction partners.
In an attempt to assess peoples' preferences over joint outcomes alone,
disentangled from their beliefs about the other persons' behavior, David M.
Messick and Charles G. McClintock in 1968 devised what has become known as
the decomposed game technique. Basically, any task where one decision
maker can alone determine which one out of at least two own-other resource
allocation options will be realized is a decomposed game.
By observing which own-other resource allocation a person chooses in a
decomposed game, it is possible to infer that person's preferences over own-other
resource allocations, i.e. social value orientation. Since there is no other
person making a decision that affects the joint outcome, there is no
interdependence, and therefore a potential effect of beliefs on behavior
is ruled out. To give an example, consider two
options, A and B. If you choose option A, you will receive $100, and another
person will receive $10. If you choose option B, you will receive $85, and the
other person will also receive $85. This is a decomposed game. If a person
chooses option B, we can infer that this person does not only consider the
outcome for the self when making a decision, but also takes into account
the outcome for the other. SVO conceptualization
When people seek to maximize their gains, they are said to be proself. But
when people are also concerned with other's gains and losses, they are said
to be prosocial. There are four categories within SVO. Individualistic
and competitive SVOs are proself while cooperative and altruistic SVOs are
prosocial: Individualistic orientation: Members of
this category are concerned only with their own outcomes. They make decisions
based on what they think they will personally achieve, without concern for
others outcomes. They are focused only on their own outcomes and therefore do
not get involved with other group members. they neither assist nor
interfere. However their actions may indirectly impact other members of the
group but such impact is not their goal. Competitive orientation: Competitors
much like individualists strive to maximize their own outcomes, but in
addition they seek to minimize others outcomes. disagreements and arguments
are viewed as win-lose situations and competitors find satisfaction in forcing
their ideas upon others. A competitor has the belief that each person should
get the most they can in each situation and play to win every time. Those with
competitive SVOs are more likely to find themselves in conflicts. Competitors
cause cooperators to react with criticism to their abrasive styles.
However, competitors rarely modify their behavior in response to these complaints
because they are relatively unconcerned with maintaining interpersonal
relations. Cooperative orientation: Cooperators
tend to maximize their own outcomes as well as other's outcomes. They prefer
strategies that generate win-win situations. When dealing with other
people they believe that it is better if everyone comes out even in a situation.
Altruistic orientation: altruists are motivated to help other who are in need.
Members of this category are low in self-interest. They willingly sacrifice
their own outcomes in the hopes of helping others achieve gain.
However, in 1973 Griesinger and Livingston provided a geometric
framework of SVO with which they could show that SVO is in principle not a
categorical, but a continuous construct that allows for an infinite number of
social value orientations. The basic idea was to represent outcomes
for the self and for the other on a Cartesian plane, and represent own-other
payoff allocation options as coordinates on a circle centered at the origin of
the plane. If a person chooses a particular own-other outcome allocation
on the ring, that person's SVO can be represented by the angle of the line
starting at the origin of the Cartesian plane and intersecting the coordinates
of the respective chosen own-other outcome allocation.
If, for instance, a person would choose the option on the circle that maximizes
the own outcome, this would refer to an SVO angle of , indicating a perfectly
individualistic SVO. An angle of would indicate a perfectly cooperative SVO,
while an angle of would indicate a perfectly competitive SVO. This
conceptualization indicates that SVO is a continuous construct, since there is
an infinite number of possible SVOs, because angular degrees are continuous.
This advancement in the conceptualization of the SVO construct
also clarified that SVO as originally conceptualized can be represented in
terms of a utility function of the following form
where is the outcome for the self, is the outcome for the other, and the
parameters indicate the weight a person attaches to the own outcome and the
outcome for the other. SVO measurement
Several different measurement methods exist for assessing SVO. The basis for
any of these measures is the decomposed game technique, i.e. a set of
non-constant-sum dictator games. The most commonly used SVO measures are the
following. = Ring Measure =
The Ring measure was devised by Wim B. G. Liebrand in 1984 and is based on the
geometric SVO framework proposed by Griesinger and Livingson in 1973. In the
Ring measure, subjects are asked to choose between 24 pairs of options that
allocate money to the subject and the "other". The 24 pairs of outcomes
correspond to equally spaced adjacent own-other-payoff allocations on an SVO
ring, i.e. a circle with a certain radius centered at the origin of the
Cartesian plane. The vertical axis measures the amount of points or money
allocated to the other and the horizontal axis measures the amount
allocated to the self. Each pair of outcomes corresponds to two adjacent
points on the circle. Adding up a subject's 24 choices yields a
motivational vector with a certain length and angle. The length of the
vector indicates the consistency of a subject's choice behavior, while the
angle indicates that subject's SVO. Subjects are then categorized into one
out of eight SVO categories according to their SVO angle, given a sufficiently
consistent choice pattern. This measure allows for the detection of uncommon
pathological SVOs, such as masochism, sadomasochism, or martyrdom, which would
indicate that a subject attaches a negative weight to the outcome for the
self given the utility function described above.
= Triple-Dominance Measure = The triple-dominance measure is directly
based on the use of decomposed games as suggested by Messick and McClintock.
Concretely, the triple-dominance measure consists of nine items, each of which
asks a subject to choose one out of three own-other-outcome allocations. The
three options do have the same characteristics in each of the items.
One option maximizes the outcome for the self, a second option maximizes the sum
of the outcomes for the self and the other, and the third option maximizes
the relative gain. If a subject chooses an option indicating a particular SVO in
at least six out of the nine items, the subject is categorized accordingly. That
is, a subject is categorized as cooperative/prosocial, individualistic,
or competitive. = SVO Slider Measure =
The Slider measure assess SVO on a continuous scale, rather than
categorizing subjects into nominal motivational groups. The instrument
consists of 6 primary and 9 secondary items. In each item of the paper-based
version of the Slider measure, a subject has to indicate her most preferred
own-other outcome allocation out of nine options. From a subject's choices in the
primary items, the SVO angle can be computed. There is also an online
version of the Slider measure, where subjects can slide along a continuum of
own-other payoff allocations in the items, allowing for a very precise
assessment of a person's SVO. The secondary items can be used for
differentiating between the motivations to maximize the joint outcome and to
minimize the difference in outcomes among prosocial subjects. The SVO Slider
Measure has been shown to be more reliable than previously used measures,
and yields SVO scores on a continuous scale.
Stylized SVO facts SVO has been shown to be predictive of
important behavioral variables, such as: cooperative behavior in social dilemmas
helping behavior donation behavior
proenvironmental behavior negotiation behavior
Furthermore, it has been shown that individualism is prevalent among very
young children, and that the frequency of expressions of prosocial and
competitive SVOs increases with age. Among adults, it has been shown
repeatedly that prosocial SVOs are most frequently observed, followed by
individualistic SVOs, and competitive SVOs. Evidence also suggests that SVO is
first and foremost determined by socialization, and that genetic
predisposition plays a minor role in SVO development.
SVO from a broader perspective The SVO construct is rooted in social
psychology, but has also been studied in other disciplines, such as economics.
However, the general concept underlying SVO is inherently interdisciplinary, and
has been studied under different names in a variety of different scientific
fields; it is the concept of distributive preferences. Originally,
the SVO construct as conceptualized by the SVO ring framework did not include
preferences such as inequality aversion, which is a distributive preference
heavily studied in experimental economics. This particular motivation
can also not be assessed with commonly used measures of SVO, except with the
SVO Slider Measure. The original SVO concept can be extended, though, by
representing peoples' distributive preferences in terms of utility
functions, as is standard in economics. For instance, a representation of SVO
that includes the expression of a motivation to minimize differences
between outcomes could be formalized as follows.
Several utility functions as representations of peoples' concerns for
the welfare of others have been devised and used in economics. It is a challenge
for future interdisciplinary research to combine the findings from different
scientific disciplines and arrive at a unifying theory of SVO. Representing SVO
in terms of a utility function and going beyond the construct's original
conceptualization may facilitate the achievement of this ambitious goal.
References See also
Social dilemma Cooperation
Clyde Kluckhohn and his Social Values Orientation Theory
Experimental economics Experimental psychology
Human behavior Motivation
Rokeach Value Survey Social preferences
Social psychology Value system