Measuring Social Value Orientation

• Published in: Judgment and Decision Making Vol. 6; no. 8; pp. 771 - 781
• Main Authors: Murphy, Ryan O., Ackermann, Kurt A., Handgraaf, Michel J. J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tallahassee Society for Judgment and Decision Making 01.12.2011; Cambridge University Press
• Series: Judgment and Decision Making
• Subjects: Altruism; Behavior; Decision making; Decision theory; game; Game theory; individual differences; measurement methods; motives; narrow self-interest; own; Power; Quantitative psychology; regression; resource dilemmas; risk; Self interest; social preferences; Social Value Orientation (SVO); Statistical power; Social Value Orientation (SVO); social preferences; narrow self-interest; measurement methods; individual differences
• ISSN: 1930-2975; 1930-2975
• DOI: 10.1017/s1930297500004204

Narrow self-interest is often used as a simplifying assumption when studying people making decisions in social contexts. Nonetheless, people exhibit a wide range of different motivations when choosing unilaterally among interdependent outcomes. Measuring the magnitude of the concern people have for others, sometimes called Social Value Orientation (SVO), has been an interest of many social scientists for decades and several different measurement methods have been developed so far. Here we introduce a new measure of SVO that has several advantages over existent methods. A detailed description of the new measurement method is presented, along with norming data that provide evidence of its solid psychometric properties. We conclude with a brief discussion of the research streams that would benefit from a more sensitive and higher resolution measure of SVO, and extend an invitation to others to use this new measure which is freely available.