Sex differences in the endorsement of human values

The mediating effect of greed

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-8623.2022.1.38863

Keywords:

greed, personality, human values, sex differences, evolutionary psychology

Abstract

In Brazil, there are no investigations into the psychological and sociodemographic correlates of greed. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between greed and human values. In addition, we tested the mediating effect of greed on gender differences in the endorsement of values. Participants answered the Dispositional Greed Scale, Basic Values Survey and demographic questions. The value correlates indicated that greed people, although materially motivated (existence values), express higher-order needs of aesthetics (suprapersonal values). However, greed personality was a more important predictor of the personal values. There were differences between the sexes only regarding greed and personal values, in which men had higher scores. Finally, the greed partially mediated the gender difference in the endorsement of personal values which suggests that men have an egocentric orientation because are greedier. The results are discussed taking into account the Functional Theory of Human Values, personality of individual differences and evolutionary psychology.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Gleidson Diego Lopes Loureto, Universidade Federal de Roraima (UFRR), Boa Vista, RR, Brasil.

Doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), em João Pessoa, PB, Brasil. Professor do curso de Psicologia da Universidade Federal de Roraima (UFRR), em Boa Vista, RR, Brasil.

Leogildo Alves Freires, Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL), Maceió, AL, Brasil

Doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), em João Pessoa, PB, Brasil. Professor do Instituto de Psicologia da Universidade Federal de Alagoas (UFAL), em Maceió, AL, Brasil.

Renan Pereira Monteiro, Universidade Federal) da Paraíba (UFPB), João Pessoa, PB, Brasil.

Doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), em João Pessoa, PB, Brasil. Professor do curso de Psicopedagogia da Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), em João Pessoa, PB, Brasil.

Alessandro Teixeira Rezende, Faculdade de Integração do Sertão (FIS), Serra Talhada, PE, Brasil.

Doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), em João Pessoa, PB, Brasil. Professor do curso de Psicologia da Faculdade de Integração do Sertão (FIS), em Serra Talhada, PE, Brasil.

Valdiney Veloso Gouveia, Universidade Federal) da Paraíba (UFPB), João Pessoa, PB, Brasil.

Doutor em Psicologia Social pela Universidade Complutense de Madrid (UCM), em Madri, Espanha. Professor titular do Departamento de Psicologia da Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB) e bolsista de produtividade (1A) do CNPq.

References

Balot, R. K. (2001). Greed and injustice in classical Athens. Princeton University Press.

Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of personality and social psychology, 51, 1173-1182. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.6.1173

Birkás, B., & Csathó, Á. (2016). Size the day: The time perspectives of the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 86, 318-320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.06.035

Brummer, A. (2015). Bad banks: Greed, incompetence and the next global crisis. Random House.

Buss, D. M. (2016). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. Basic Books.

Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204-232. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.100.2.204

Crawford, C. B., & Anderson, J. L. (1989). Sociobiology: An environmentalist discipline? American Psychologist, 44, 1449-1459. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.44.12.1449

Eckel, C. C., & Grossman, P. J. (1998). Are women less selfish than men? Evidence from dictator experiments. The economic journal, 108, 726-735. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0297.00311

Epskamp, S., Cramer, A. O. J., Waldorp, L. J., Schmittmann, V. D., & Borsboom, D. (2012). qgraph: Network Visualizations of Relationships in Psychometric Data. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i04

Ferguson, C. J. (2009). An effect size primer: A guide for clinicians and researchers. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 40, 532-538. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015808

Fife-Schaw, C. (2010). Modelos quasi-experimentais. In G. M. Breakwell., S, Hammond., J. A. Smith., & V. G. Haase, Métodos de pesquisa em psicologia (pp. 100-115). Artmed.

Figueredo, A. J., Vásquez, G., Brumbach, B. H., Schneider, S. M., Sefcek, J. A., Tal, I. R., Hill, D., Wenner, C. J., & Jacobs, W. J. (2006). Consilience and life history theory: From genes to brain to reproductive strategy. Developmental Review, 26, 243-275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2006.02.002

Freires, L. A., Loureto, G. D. L., Ribeiro, M. G. C., Santos, L. C. O, & Gouveia, V. V. (2019). Dispositional Greed Scale: evidências de sua estrutura interna e parâmetros dos itens. Psico-USF, 24, 483-493. https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-82712019240307

Fruchterman, T., & Reingold, E. (1991). Graph drawing by force-directed placement. Software – Practice & Experience, 21, 1129-1164. https://doi.org/10.1002/spe.4380211102

Furnham, A., & Trickey, G. (2011). Sex differences in the dark side traits. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 517-522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.11.021

Gilliland, S. W., & Anderson, J. (2011). Perceptions of greed: A distributive justice model. In S. W. Gilliland, D. D. Steiner, & D. P. Skarlicki (Eds.), Emerging perspectives on organizational justice and ethics (pp. 137-166). Information Age.

Gilliland, S. W., & Anderson, J. S. (2014). On the psychology of greed. In J. K. Ford, J. R. Hollenbeck. & A. M. Ryan (Eds.), The nature of work: Advances in psychological theory, methods, and practice (pp. 99-116). American Psychological Association.

Gouveia, V. V. (Org.). (2016). Teoria funcionalista dos valores humanos: áreas de estudo e aplicações. Vetor.

Gouveia, V. V., Fonsêca, P. N., Milfont, T. L., & Fischer, R. (2011). Valores humanos: Contribuições e perspectivas teóricas. In C. V. Torres, & E. R. Neiva (Eds.), A psicologia social: Principais temas e vertentes (pp. 296-313). ArtMed.

Gouveia, V. V., Milfont, T. L., & Guerra, V. M. (2014). Functional theory of human values: Testing its content and structure hypotheses. Personality and Individual Differences, 60, 41-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2013.12.012

Greenfeld, L. (2001). The spirit of capitalism: Nationalism and economic growth. Harvard University Press.

Hayes, A. F. (2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford Publications.

Jonason, P. K., Foster, J. D., Kavanagh, P. S., Gouveia, V. V., & Birkas, B. (2018). Basic values and the Dark Triad traits. Journal of Individual Differences, 39, 220-228. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000267

Kajonius, P., Persson, B., & Jonason, P. K. (2015). Hedonism, achievement, and power: Universal values that characterize the Dark Triad. Personality and Individual Differences, 77, 173-178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.055

Koehn, M. A., Okan, C., & Jonason, P. K. (2019). A primer on the Dark Triad traits. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71, 7-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12198

Krekels, G., & Pandelaere, M. (2015). Dispositional greed. Personality and Individual Differences, 74, 225-230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.10.036

Levine, D. P. (2005). The corrupt organization. Human Relations, 58, 723-740. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726705057160

Liu, Z., Sun, X., Ding, X., Hu, X., Xu, Z., & Fu, Z. (2019). Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Dispositional Greed Scale and a portrait of greedy people. Personality and Individual Differences, 137, 101-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.08.012

Lopes, G. S., Barbaro, N., Sela, Y., Jeffery, A. J., Pham, M. N., Shackelford, T. K., & Zeigler-Hill, V. (2017). Endorsement of social and personal values predicts the desirability of men and women as long-term partners. Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474704917742384

Loureto, G. D. L. (2019). Tomada de Risco Orientada ao Status e Estratégias de Vida: Efeito Mediador das Prioridades Axiológicas (Dissertação de mestrado). Departamento de Psicologia, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, João Pessoa, PB.

Mussel, P., & Hewig, J. (2016). The life and times of individuals scoring high and low on dispositional greed. Journal of Research in Personality, 64, 52-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.07.002

Mussel, P., Rodrigues, J., Krumm, S., & Hewig, J. (2018). The convergent validity of five dispositional greed scales. Personality and Individual Differences, 131, 249-253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.05.006

Markus, H., & Zajonc, R. B. (1985). The cognitive perspective in social psychology. In G. Lindzey, & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (pp. 137-230). Random House.

Paulhus, D. L., Jones, D. N. (2014). Measures of dark personalities. In G. J. Boyle, D.H. Saklofske, & G. Mathews (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological constructs (pp. 562-594). Academic Press.

R Development Core Team (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/fullrefman.pdf

Richins, M. L., & Dawson, S. (1992). A consumer values orientation for materialism and its measurement: Scale development and validation. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 303-316. https://doi.org/10.1086/209304

Richins, M. L. (2004). The material values scale: Measurement properties and development of a short form. Journal of Consumer Research, 31(1), 209-219. https://doi.org/10.1086/383436

Robertson, A. F. (2013). Greed: Gut feelings, growth, and history. John Wiley & Sons.

Roff, D. A. (1992). The Evolution of Life Histories. Theory and Analysis. Chapman and Hall.

Rosseel, Y. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48, 1-36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02

Semenya, S. W., & Honey, P. L. (2015). Dominance styles mediate sex differences in Dark Triad traits. Personality and Individual Differences, 83, 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.03.046

Schreiber, J. B., Nora, A., Stage, F. K., Barlow, E. A., & King, J. (2006). Reporting structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis results: A review. The Journal of educational research, 99(6), 323-338. https://doi.org/10.3200/JOER.99.6.323-338

Seuntjens, T. G., Zeelenberg, M. Breugelmans, S. M., & van de Ven, N. (2014). Defining Greed. British Journal of Psychology, 106, 505-525. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12100

Seuntjens, T. G., Zeelenberg, M., van de Ven, N., & Breugelmans, S. M. (2015). Dispositional Greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108, 917-933. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000031

Seuntjens, T. G., van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & van der Schors, A. (2016). Greed and adolescent financial behavior. Journal of Economic Psychology, 57, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2016.09.002

Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422-445. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.7.4.422

Soto, C. J., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). The developmental psychometrics of big five self-reports: Acquiescence, factor structure, coherence, and differentiation from ages 10 to 20. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(4), 718-737. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.4.718

Tickle, P. (2004). Greed: The seven deadly sins. Oxford University Press.

Visser, B. A., Pozzebon, J. A., & Reina-Tamayo, A. M. (2014). Status-driven risk taking: Another “dark” personality? Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 46, 485-496. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034163

Downloads

Published

2022-10-21

How to Cite

Loureto, G. D. L., Freires, L. A., Monteiro, R. P., Rezende, A. T., & Gouveia, V. V. (2022). Sex differences in the endorsement of human values: The mediating effect of greed. Psico, 53(1), e38863. https://doi.org/10.15448/1980-8623.2022.1.38863

Issue

Vol. 53 No. 1 (2022): Single Volume - Continuous Publication

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Psico

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright

The submission of originals to Psico implies the transfer by the authors of the right for publication. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication. If the authors wish to include the same data into another publication, they must cite Psico as the site of original publication.

Creative Commons License

Except where otherwise specified, material published in this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original publication is correctly cited.