Value-Instantiating beliefs

Abstract

This dissertation presents value-instantiating beliefs, a social psychological construct designed to capture individual differences in motivational meaning. Building on the intuition that meaning can be understood in terms of intent, I define value-instantiating beliefs as perceived consequences of actions, objects or events for basic human values. In the first chapter, I provide the formal specification of the construct and argue that in social psychological research, the motivational meaning of actions and stimuli is both habitually assumed and conditioning the effects. Formalizing and assessing it can then help map an important boundary condition for psychological effects and improve the predictive power of models. In the same chapter, I develop the two core hypotheses: that value-instantiating beliefs moderate the value-behavior relationship and mediate the effects of socialization on behavior. In the following chapters I present three preregistered studies with a total of 4,459 participants that assess the two hypotheses. The first study provides experimental evidence that VIBs affect value-behavior relationships. The second study validates a survey measure for the construct with a mixed-methods longitudinal design and corroborates the moderating role of the VIBs in a real-life application. The third study presents a mediational SEM analysis that showcases the utility of VIBs as markers of socialization. The presented studies are a proof of concept and demonstrate the promise of including individual differences in motivational meaning into quantitative psychological models. The theoretical framework presented in this dissertation can be applied to problems in intergroup relations, attitude formation and persuasion, and cultural change.