The Relationship Between Decontextualized Traits and Idiographically Expressed Values
Creators: name: McAuliffe, William
name: McCauley, Thomas
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022

description: What is the relationship between values and personality traits? Researchers have found medium-to-strong (Gignac &amp; Szodorai, 2016) relationships between Schwartz's Universal Values (as assessed by self-reported importance of a given value or self-reported similarity to exemplars of a given value) and broad personality traits (as assessed by self-reports of the big five, hexaco, and "dark" traits (Kajonius, Persson, &amp; Jonason, 2015; Parks-Leduc, Feldman, &amp; Bardi, 2015; Pozzebon, &amp; Ashton, 2009). Researchers interpret these results as showing that certain traits (especially openness to experience and honesty-humility) are strongly related to values, but it is possible that the true relationship between these variables is magnified by shared method variance. For instance, the Portrait Values Questionnaire correlates particularly strongly with five-factor model self-reports because it uses trait-like wording (Parks-Leduc, Feldman, &amp; Bardi, 2015). Moreover, self-reported endorsement of values and traits both possess substantial social desirability variance (Anglim, Morse, De Vries, MacCann, &amp; Marty, 2017; Frimer, Schaefer, &amp; Oakes, 2014; Pettersson, Turkheimer, Horn, &amp; Menatti, 2012), which may further inflate correlations. Measuring values and traits using different methods may provide more realistic estimates of the associations between values and traits. For instance, spontaneous, idiographic reports of goals contain much more selfish content than self-reported importance of various goals (Frimer et al., 2014). Researchers have successfully developed a system for coding idiographic goals for Schwartz's values (Frimer, Walker, &amp; Dunlop, 2009). Thus, a promising approach for estimating the true relationship between personality and goals could involve measuring personality using trait self-reports and measuring values using idiographic goal reports. This measurement approach mirrors theoretical differences in the role traits and values play in personality (Dunlop, 2015; McAdams, 1995): Measuring values by having people self-report their goals reflects the fact that values--like goals-- are inherently motivational when endorsed; in contrast, traits reflection general styles of engaging with the world, which are perhaps best reflected in relatively unconditional trait self-reports (Bilsky &amp; Schwartz, 1994). We draw on two datasets (Study 1, N = 814; Study 2, N = 778) that measured goals using Emmons' (1999) Personal Strivings List. The first dataset also had trait self-reports of psychopathy and sadism. The second dataset included the HEXACO Honesty-Humility scale, which correlates perfectly with the Short Dark Triad total score (Hodson et al., 2018), as well as the rest of the 100-item HEXACO. We will examine the relationship between the trait self-reports and the values embedded in participants' goals. We will use polychoric correlations due to the fact that traits (measured on 5-point Likert-type scales) and values (counts that likely range between 0-3, which in this setting cannot be assumed to have equal spacing on the latent continuum) are measured using ordinal scales. Personal goals are often built upon beliefs about one's own traits (Reisz, Boudreaux, and Ozer, 2013; Roberts &amp; Robins, 2000). Moreover, method variance is unlikely to wholly explain the variability in magnitude in correlations between self-reported traits and values. Consequently, we expect positive, significant correlations between self-reported traits and values as embedded in goals. However, we would expect generally smaller correlations than have been found by other investigators (viz., Anglim, Knowles, Dunlop, &amp; Marty, 2017; Kajonius et al., 2015; Parks-Leduc et al., 2015). Anglim, J., Morse, G., De Vries, R. E., MacCann, C., &amp; Marty, A. (2017). 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