Are Personal Values Associated with Social Decisions? The Role of Self-Transcendence in Promoting Prosocial Outcomes

Social situations require people to make complex decisions, sometimes involving different outcomes for the self and others. The aim of this study is to investigate personal values as possible factors associated with a preference for more self-maximizing or cooperative choices. In an adult sample (N = 63), we assessed participants’ tendency towards prosocial or proself outcomes and 4 higher-order values, namely openness to change, conservation, self-transcendence, and self-enhancement. We expected self-transcendence to be positively associated with more prosocial orientations. Our result confirmed that self-transcendence was positively correlated with prosociality whereas no other higher-order values were associated with social values. Participants with increased self-transcendence also have an inclination towards more prosocial behaviors. Our data also revealed that inequality aversion was the primary motivation of prosocials, and this result was unrelated to gender effects or the personal values under investigation. Supporting the theory of basic individual values, our results show that the higher-order value of self-transcendence is a significant positive correlate of prosocial
behaviors in a resources allocation task.