The Effect of Benevolence Values and Implicit Theories of Values on Other-Focused behaviors Who are the people who engage in other-focused behaviors? The goal of the current research is to better understand one aspect of this broad question, concerning with the personal values of prosocial individuals. Previous research found that self-transcendence values (i.e. benevolence and universalism) can predict prosocial behavior (Bardi & Schwartz, 2003); however, the correlations were rather weak, especially for benevolence. The aim of the present study is to test the influence of a moderator of the relations between benevolence values and other-focused behaviors – the implicit self-theory of whether or not values can change. It is possible that the effect of values on behaviors is stronger than previously found, but only for individuals who implicitly believe in the stability of values. The implicit belief in the malleability of values might weaken the role of values as guiding principles in people's life. Personal values Personal values serve as guiding principles in people's lives. They reflect what people consider important in their lives (e.g., security, self-direction) across context and time. …show more content…
Results (see Fig. 1) revealed a Johnson–Neyman point of 6.81. For participants with ratings below this on implicit theories of values index, benevolence values predicted other-focused behavior. However, for participants with ratings above 6.81 on implicit theories of values index (i.e., about 10% of participants in the current experiment), benevolence values did not predict other-focused behavior. As Figure 1 demonstrates, the higher the rating on implicit theories of value, the lower the connection between benevolence values and other-focused