Maio Gregory R, Hahn Ulrike, Frost John-Mark, Cheung Wing-Yee
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009 Oct;97(4):598-614. doi: 10.1037/a0016683.
Across 4 experiments, the authors investigated the role of value instantiation in bridging the gap between abstract social values and behavior in specific situations. They predicted and found that participants engaged in more egalitarian behavior (point allocation using the minimal group paradigm) after contemplating a typical instantiation of the value of equality compared to an atypical instantiation or a control condition that simply made the value salient. This effect occurred when participants generated reasons for valuing equality in the instantiation (Experiment 1) and when participants merely read about hypothetical examples of the instantiation context (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). Results across experiments indicated that the effect of prior instantiations was not mediated by changes in the abstract value; instead, the process of applying the abstract value was crucial (Experiment 4). Together, the experiments show that the process of applying an abstract value to a specific situation can be influenced by seemingly unrelated prior episodes.
在4个实验中，作者研究了价值实例化在弥合抽象社会价值观与特定情境下行为之间差距方面的作用。他们预测并发现，与非典型实例化或仅使该价值凸显的控制条件相比，参与者在思考平等价值的典型实例化后，会表现出更多的平等主义行为（使用最小群体范式进行点数分配）。当参与者在实例化中阐述重视平等的理由时（实验1），以及当参与者仅仅阅读关于实例化情境的假设示例时（实验2、3和4），这种效应都会出现。各实验结果表明，先前实例化的影响并非由抽象价值的变化所介导；相反，应用抽象价值的过程至关重要（实验4）。这些实验共同表明，将抽象价值应用于特定情境的过程可能会受到看似无关的先前事件的影响。
