SVO Conceptualization
When people seek to maximize their gains, they are said to be proself. But when people are also concerned with other's gains and losses, they are said to be prosocial. There are four categories within SVO. Individualistic and cooperative SVOs are proself while cooperative and altruistic SVOs are prosocial:
- Individualistic orientation: Members of this category are concerned only with their own outcomes. They make decisions based on what they think they will personally achieve, without concern for others outcomes. They are focused only on their own outcomes and therefore do not get involved with other group members. they neither assist nor interfere. However their actions may indirectly impact other members of the group but such impact is not their goal.
- Competitive orientation: Competitors much like individualists strive to maximize their own outcomes, but in addition they seek to minimize others outcomes. disagreements and arguments are viewed as win-lose situations and competitors find satisfaction in forcing their ideas upon others. A competitor has the believes that each person should get the most they can in each situation and play to win every time. Those with competitive SVOs are more likely to find themselves in conflicts. Competitors cause cooperators to react with criticism to their abrasive styles. However, competitors rarely modify their behavior in response to these complaints because they are relatively unconcerned with maintaining interpersonal relations.
- Cooperative orientation: Cooperators tend to maximize their own outcomes as well as other's outcomes. They prefer strategies that generate win-win situations. When dealing with other people they believe that it is better if everyone comes out even in a situation.
- Altruistic orientation: altruists are motivated to help other who are in need. Members of this category are low in self-interest. They willingly sacrifice their own outcomes in the hopes of helping others achieve gain.
However, in 1973 Griesinger and Livingston provided a geometric framework of SVO (the SVO ring, see Figure 1) with which they could show that SVO is in principle not a categorical, but a continuous construct that allows for an infinite number of social value orientations.
The basic idea was to represent outcomes for the self (on the x-axis) and for the other (on the y-axis) on a Cartesian plane, and represent own-other payoff allocation options as coordinates on a circle centered at the origin of the plane. If a person chooses a particular own-other outcome allocation on the ring, that person's SVO can be represented by the angle of the line starting at the origin of the Cartesian plane and intersecting the coordinates of the respective chosen own-other outcome allocation.
If, for instance, a person would choose the option on the circle that maximizes the own outcome, this would refer to an SVO angle of, indicating a perfectly individualistic SVO. An angle of would indicate a perfectly cooperative (maximizing joint outcomes) SVO, while an angle of would indicate a perfectly competitive (maximizing relative gain) SVO. This conceptualization indicates that SVO is a continuous construct, since there is an infinite number of possible SVOs, because angular degrees are continuous.
This advancement in the conceptualization of the SVO construct also clarified that SVO as originally conceptualized can be represented in terms of a utility function of the following form
,
where is the outcome for the self, is the outcome for the other, and the parameters indicate the weight a person attaches to the own outcome and the outcome for the other .
Read more about this topic: Social Value Orientations