Self-respect, control over environment and unpredictability appear consistent American values

The symbol of America and its core values

In 2010 researchers found that Americans value self-respect more than security.  But five years later, have attitudes changed, and what appear to be the most consistent American values?

While politicians and in pollsters stressed in 2010 is what Americans wanted at the time is that self respect and the interest in it was found to be steadily growing over the years.

The research was done at the University of Oregon found a sense of belonging and security had diminished over the past 30 years.  This was in spite of 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Towers.  But the focus on the research was on personal safety as much as anything.  The results were published in the Journal of Advertising Research at the time.  It was done in order to examine people's values and to understand them in order to target marketing campaigns.


"Research on advertising effectiveness has shown that advertisements that connect to people's core values are more effective than ones that don't," said Lynn R. Kahle, the Ehrman V. Giustina Professor of Marketing in the UO's Lundquist College of Business in her remarks related to the research. "If you keep questioning people on why they buy something, before very long you will get to a core social value. We find that understanding these core values is the basic reason that people buy certain brands of products."

Self-respect also was the most important value expressed by most of people in previous surveys. Since 1976, self-respect has risen from the top pick by 21.1 percent of all respondents to 28.8 percent in 2007. Also rising fast was "warm relationships with others," from 16.2 percent to 20.9 percent since 1976. And the popularity of "fun-enjoyment-excitement" more than doubled as a top choice, from 4.5 percent to 9.3 percent.

Security was the #1 worry in 1976, but in 2007 its social value had fallen to 12.4 percent.  That's because the emphasis of the research was on the security of material belongings and whether that identified someone's sense of self-worth.

"Security and sense of belonging decreased in importance since 1986," said the new study's lead author Eda Gurel-Atay, a doctoral student working with Kahle. "Security has been decreasing a lot in importance. We found this surprising because people were talking about security all the time, such as in relationship to 9/11 and economic issues as well as Hurricane Katrina. We found that people want respect for themselves and they want to be important to other people. Knowing this is important because, as marketers or advertisers, we can come up with strategies that are most usable to our audience and to our products."

Researchers say social media may have played a part in how people view themselves and their world.  It shows how a person feels internally is more and more important in comparison with material security.

The reason for the fluctuations in American values from time to time is another value University evaluations have found when looking at core values.  They actually value unpredictability in themselves, spontaneity, creativity, individual freedom to examine themselves and their world.  It is considered to be an ongoing value, although it may be expressed differently depending on the time when polls and surveys are taken.  In fact the #1 core value over time is considered to be personal control over one's environment.  It is considered very important that people take responsibility for his or her well-being within the context of where he or she lives and the conditions of the environment.  Americans see the value of man controlling nature rather than nature controlling man.

So while pollsters often survey American ideals and values from time to time, the individuality of one's beliefs, ideas and that environmental aspect of control, as well as the value of unpredictability may account for the fact that Americans may actually be hard to predict and why the politicians and pollsters try to make their surveys often.