Evolution of Evaluating Values

By: Shahab Sabahi, Policy Analyst in Energy Security and Policy Research Group

Empirical  evidence shows how social evolution changes worldviews and motivations in societies [The World Values Survey www.worldvaluessurvey.org ]. According to the results there are cross-national differences which are robust and enduring, and they are closely correlated with a society's level of economic development: people in low-income societies are much likelier to emphasize traditions than are people in rich countries. These values surveys demonstrate that the worldviews of people living in rich societies differ systematically from those of people living in low-income societies across a wide range of political and social norms. The differences run along two basic dimensions: traditional versus rational values and survival versus self-expression values.

Traditional societies emphasize religion, respect for and obedience to authority, and national pride. These characteristics change as societies become more rational.

 The shift from survival to self-expression values is linked to the rise of postindustrial societies. It reflects a cultural shift that occurs when younger generations emerge that have grown up taking survival for granted. Survival values give top priority to economic and physical security and conformist social norms. Self-expression values give high priority to freedom of expression, participation in decision-making, political activism, environmental protection, gender equality, and tolerance of ethnic minorities, foreigners, and gays and lesbians. These values create a culture of trust and tolerance in which people cherish individual freedom and self-expression. These attributes explain how economic growth, which takes societies from agrarian to industrial and then from industrial to postindustrial, leads to democratization. The unprecedented economic growth of the past 50 years has meant that an increasing share of the world's population has grown up taking survival for granted. Mass priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security to an emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression, participation in decision-making, and a relatively trusting and tolerant outlook.

 

Social logic and status competition

By Shahab Sabahi, Energy and Environment for Development – Policy Research Group

 

Social logic influences humans’ choice for lifestyle. By definition, in society level, people make decisions by using a social logic that is based on norms and the expectations of society. Social logic is enormously swayed by policy choice and the fabrication of the conventional wisdom [The Affluent Society; J.K. Galbraith] which are in the hands of governments, elites or interest groups.

This essay has no intention to elaborate on how rationalists and constructivists see social logic. Rather it argues consequences of using social logic when it manifested in the form of trends, fashions, belief, and particularly in the form of societal status completion. 

For society as a whole, the major benefit of status competition is that continuously raises demands for goods and services. It legitimates the expansion of existing markets and consumption. Furthermore status competition requires the introduction of new goods and services. It, in turn, inspires the supply side of the economy to increase the production and to carry out innovation. Ever-last demand and innovation [creative destructive, J. Schumpeter] are two pillars of a capitalistic economy. Thus, status competition is inevitably essential for perpetuating economic growth.

However there are also disadvantages that arise from status competition, let alone environmental impacts, such as individual’s internal conflict. Status competition may differently affect dominate and subordinate members of society. There is a vast literature on the competition-driven-individual’s stress in the field of biology. Stress, as lab experience reports has testified is a sign that a living object is growing increasingly unfit for the environment in which it lives. A. R. Wallace’s research showed when a living object and its environment are no longer a good match, either should give, and it is always the former.

In long term, the person who exposes to prolonged stress would lose its competition ability. Research shows person who experiences stresses or radical changes has large chance to hold high level of cortisol in its body at the cost of reduction in testosterone. Cortisol is a chemical inside bodies that is released in response to stressful events, while testosterone is essential steroid for boosting competition (research articles in Social psychology field).

According to the above argument, eventually status competition washes away its earlier economic benefits and leaves behind an ineffective consumption-centered society.

Perhaps social logic should influence individual’s decision towards a higher quality, instead of status, competition.