Zeitgeist Effects, Fragmentation of Media Use, and Value Consensus

Finland changed from an industrial society to an information society in 1991-2015. Due to economic fluctuations, diffusion of digitalization and media turbulence the period changed Finnish society a lot. We studied the impact of this on basic human values with Schwartz's approach, and concentrated on zeitgeist effects. We developed a definition of zeitgeist effects and a set of hypotheses, based on the literature, to study how major societal changes influence values. Also, we found theoretical similarities between value consensus, democratization and the fragmentation of media use that we analyzed. Data (N = 7.172) were collected in five waves. We measured changes in the ten values, and used the two value dimensions based on factor analysis, also. Moreover, we used the Schwartz value map to illustrate value changes in social groups. The combination of the latter two methods offer a parsimonious way to get an overview of value change over a longer period of time, but single values suit better for the analysis of short-term changes. Our hypotheses received support regarding overall change that is small, as well as regarding zeitgeist effects in the 1990s, the disappearance of them in the new millennium, and how the values of social groups started to change in different directions in the era of social media. The above changes including the disappearance of zeitgeist effects in the new millennium were linked to societal events, e.g. fragmentation of media use. Moreover, we found that in a complex society zeitgeist effects might mirror simultaneous impact of several events.Peer reviewe

It pays to pay - Big Five personality influences on co-operative behaviour in an incentivized and hypothetical prisoner's dilemma game

The authors investigated how the presence or absence of monetary incentives in a prisoner's dilemma game may influence research outcomes. Specifically, the predictive power of the Big Five personality traits on decisions in an incentivized (N = 60) or hypothetical (N = 60) prisoner's dilemma game was investigated. Participants were less generous in the incentivized game. More importantly, personality predicted decisions only in the incentivized game, with low Neuroticism and high Openness to Experience predicting more cooperative transfers. The influence of Neuroticism on behaviour in the incentivized game was mediated by risk attitude. The results are consistent with other results suggesting that the Big Five are relevant predictors of moral behaviour, and with results suggesting that the determinants of hypothetical decisions are different from the determinants of real decisions, with the latter being more revealing of one's true preferences. The authors argue that psychologists, contrary to prevailing praxis, should consider making their participants' decisions more real. This could allow psychologists to more convincingly generalize laboratory findings into contexts outside of the laboratory.Big Five, Prisoner's dilemma, Social dilemma, Moral behaviour, Incentives, Stake size

Measuring Individual Risk Attitudes in the Lab: Task or Ask?: An Empirical Comparison

This paper compares two prominent empirical measures of individual risk attitudes - the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery-choice task and the multi-item questionnaire advocated by Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Schupp, Sunde and Wagner (forthcoming) - with respect to (a) their within-subject stability over time (one year) and (b) their correlation with actual risk-taking behaviour in the lab - here the amount sent in a trust game (Berg, Dickaut, McCabe, 1995). As it turns out, the measures themselves are uncorrelated (both times) and, most importantly, only the questionnaire measure exhibits test-re-test stability ( · =.78), while virtually no such stability is found in the lottery-choice task. In addition, only the questionnaire measure shows the expected correlations with a Big Five personality measure and is correlated with actual risk-taking behaviour. The results suggest that the questionnaire is the more adequate measure of individual risk attitudes for the analysis of behaviour in economic (lab) experiments. Moreover, with respect to trust, the high re-test stability of trust transfers ( ·= .70) further supports the conjecture that trusting behaviour indeed has a component which itself is a stable individual characteristic (Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman and Soutter, 2000).Risk attitudes, trust, personality, lab experiments

Measuring Individual Risk Attitudes in the Lab: Task or Ask? An Empirical Comparison

This paper compares two prominent empirical measures of individual risk attitudes - the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery-choice task and the multi-item questionnaire advocated by Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Schupp, Sunde and Wagner (forthcoming) - with respect to (a) their within-subject stability over time (one year) and (b) their correlation with actual risk-taking behaviour in the lab - here the amount sent in a trust game (Berg, Dickaut, McCabe, 1995). As it turns out, the measures themselves are uncorrelated (both times) and, most importantly, only the questionnaire measure exhibits test-re-test stability (Ï = .78), while virtually no such stability is found in the lottery-choice task. In addition, only the questionnaire measure shows the expected correlations with a Big Five personality measure and is correlated with actual risk-taking behaviour. The results suggest that the questionnaire measure is a better measure of individual risk attitudes than the lottery-choice task. Moreover, with respect to trust, the high re-test stability of trust transfers (Ï = .70) further supports the conjecture that trusting behaviour indeed has a component which itself is a stable individual characteristic (Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman and Soutter, 2000).Risk Attitudes, Trust, Personality, Lab Experiments

Group-level and intraindividual stability of national stereotypes : a four-year longitudinal study on Ingrian Finn immigrants’ pre-and postmigration stereotypes of a typical Finn

Peer reviewe

Who likes whom? The interaction between perceiver personality and target look

We investigated determinants of liking at zero-acquaintance, focusing on individual differences in perceivers' reactions to appearance cues. Perceivers (N = 385) viewed portrait photographs of Targets (N = 146). Perceiver's Agreeableness and Extraversion were uniquely associated with liking targets. Targets who expressed positive emotions, looked relaxed, were physically attractive, and looked healthy and energetic, were the most liked. There were substantial individual differences in how Perceivers were influenced by appearance cues. For instance, Perceivers generally rated targets who displayed non-Duchenne (fake) smiles less favorably than targets who did not smile or targets who displayed Duchenne (authentic) smiles. However, non-Duchenne smiles elicited especially negative ratings from Perceivers high in Neuroticism or Conscientiousness, but not from Perceivers low in Agreeableness.Peer reviewe

Values as predictors of anticipated socio-cultural adaptation among potential migrants from Russia to Finland

Peer reviewe

Why are Extraverts more Popular? : Oral Fluency mediates the Effect of Extraversion on Popularity in Middle Childhood

Peer reviewe

Peer Sociometric Status and Personality Development from Middle Childhood to Preadolescence

Sociometric status, the regard that other group members confer to an individual, is one of the most ubiq-uitous and behaviourally relevant attributes assigned to the person by the social environment. Despite this, its contri-bution to personality development has received little attention. The present three-wave longitudinal study, spanningthe age range 7–13 years (n = 1222), sought tofill this gap by examining the transactional pathways between peersociometric status (measured by peer nominations) and Five-Factor personality traits (measured by self-ratingsand parent and teacher ratings). Sociometric status prospectively predicted the development of extraversion. By con-trast, agreeableness and neuroticism prospectively predicted the development of sociometric status. Furthermore,individual-level stability in extraversion was associated with individual-level stability in sociometric status. The re-sults were robust across different sources of personality ratings. We argue that peer sociometric status in the schoolclassroom is the type of environmental effect that has potential to explain personality development. Because of its sta-bility, broadness, and possible impact across a variety of personality processes, sociometric status can both repeti-tiously and simultaneously influence the network of multiple inter-correlated micro-level personality processes,potentially leading to a new network equilibrium that manifests in changes at the level of the broad personality trait.Peer reviewe

Value priorities of the Finnish farmers : Time to stop thinking of farmers as inherently conservative and traditional

Farming communities are becoming more heterogeneous and multifunctional due to various structural and environmental changes. However, it is not known if farmers' values have also become more heterogeneous. We wanted to explore potential heterogeneity in farmers' value priorities in detail across different farmer groups in Finland using the refined Schwartz theory of 19 basic human values. A representative sample of 4,401 Finnish farmers responded to a survey in 2018. The data were analysed with multidimensional scaling, confirmatory factor analysis and one-way analysis of variance. The results show that farmers' values were heterogeneous, and differences were associated with socio-demographic characteristics. Our findings confirmed the motivational continuum structure of values, with the exception of societal-value. Security-societal was the most important value for the Finnish farmers. The theory of 19 values proved useful in uncovering value priorities in detail. The security-societal value is more a part of national identity rather than a personal motivational value in the Finnish farming community. The heterogeneity of farmers' values should be considered in more targeted policy planning.Peer reviewe