OBSERVING SOCIAL VALUE ORIENTATIONS - A SOCIAL INTERDEPENDENCE APPROACH

Social Value Theory, in which individuals are assumed to be concerned with both own and other(s)' outcomes in socially independent situation s, is reviewed. Individuals' social value orientations are then measur ed in a sample of 785 New Zealand university students. Eighty-five per cent of the subjects adopted a cooperative, an individualistic, or a c ompetitive social value orientation. These data are compared with the relative frequencies obtained in the United States and the Netherlands . Differential response latencies to various self-other choice alterna tives were also observed for individuals adopting different social val ue orientations.