One and the same? How similar are basic human values and economic preferences

Abstract

Both the basic human values approach and the economic preference approach have been developed and applied to represent fundamental drivers of human behavior in various domains by measuring people’s underlying preferences and motivations. Both of them have been used, however, in isolation from each other, the former primarily in social psychology studies and the latter mainly in economic studies. But how similar are they? Finding that they differ may suggest that combining them to explain human behavior might be beneficial. To the best of our knowledge, only a few studies have attempted to explore and empirically examine the theoretical and empirical link between variables in both approaches. The current study tries to fill this gap by examining relations between basic human values and major economic preferences. We examine the associations between the values of self-transcendence, self-enhancement, openness to change and conservation, and the economic preferences of risk aversion (or seeking), altruism, trust, and positive and negative reciprocity. We propose mechanisms as to how they may be associated with one another. For example, we expect an association between conservation and risk aversion as both are motivated by attributing importance to stability and the status quo, or between self-transcendence and altruism, as both are motivated by concern for others. For the empirical analysis we employed convenience samples collected in Poland and Germany. Results in both samples support our expectations: several values and economic preferences are linked in theoretically predictable ways, but only to a weak or moderate extent. We conclude that they are not mutually exclusive but may rather be complementary, and therefore likely both relevant for investigations into explaining behavior.