The assumption has been made that life satisfaction depends on the attainment of psychological values such as, for instance, feelings of security, freedom, and ...
Tommy Garling, Erik Lindberg, and Henry Montgomery
Beliefs about Attainment of Life Satisfaction as Determinants of Preferences for Everyday Activities Abstract The assumption has been made that life satisfaction depends on the attainment of psychological values such as, for instance, feelings of security, freedom, and accomplishment. A related question investigated in the present study is whether the type of everyday activities in which people engage, and which are related to their patterns of consumption, are seen as means by which such psychological values are attained. A questionnaire was distributed to a heterogeneous group of 112 subjects who first rated how important for life satisfaction they believed the performance of a sample of everyday activities and the attainment of a number of psychological values to be, then indicated for each activity whether or not it facilitated (or hindered) the attainment of each value. In support of the hypothesis, positive correlations were found for individual subjects between the rated importance of the activities, on the one hand, and the importance predicted on the basis of the values believed to be attained by the activities, on the other.
The reported research was financially supported by grants from the Swedish Council for Building Research and the Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The authors thank HAkan AIm and Jorgen Garvill for valuable suggestions on earlier drafts, and Ann Thors for assistance in collecting the data. Authors' addresses: Tommy Garling and Erik Lindberg, Department of Psychology, University of UmeA, S-90187 UmeA, Sweden; Henry Montgomery, Department of Psychology, University of Goteborg, S-4OO20 Goteborg, Sweden.
33 K. G. Grunert et al. (eds.), Understanding Economic Behaviour © Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989
Preferences for Everyday Activities
Background When, where, and for how long people engage in various everyday activities have been investigated in studies of time allocation (Chapin, 1974; Michelson & Reed, 1975; Szalai, Converse, Feldheim, Scheuch, & Stone, 1972). Such studies are of immediate interest to society because what people do with their time is an indicator of the objective quality of life (Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976). However, as interest broadens to include a desire to know how satisfied people are subjectively (cf. Diener, 1984), time use data are less useful unless a psychological theory exists which specifies how time allocation is related to satisfaction (Robinson, 1977; Stone, 1972). Kuhl (1986), taking as his point of departure the motivational theory of Atkinson and Birch (1986), assumes that the amount oftime devoted to an activity is proportional to its perceived attractiveness. Kuhl found support for this assumption in an experimental setting, but it seems questionable whether it holds true under most ordinary, everyday circumstances. People probably try to maximize their utility in allocating time to activities (Becker, 1976; Winston, 1987), without however necessarily succeeding because they lack some of the needed resources, such as physical and mental abilities, social and environmental support, money, and time (Frey & Foppa, 1986; Triandis, 1977). Furthermore, for different reasons, everyday activities are usually not independent of one another. Thus choice of one activity implies that one or several other activities must also be chosen. In an empirical study by the present authors (Lindberg, Garling, Montgomery, & Waara, 1987) all these circumstances might have contributed to the modest correlation found between subjects' stated preferences for a set of everyday activities and their self-reports of how often they engaged in those activities. Fishbein and Ajzen (1975; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) propose in their theory of reasoned action that intentions to perform an action or activity mediate between preference and performance of the action. Because of constraining factors such intentions can usually not be implemented directly but form parts of plans (Ajzen, 1985; Warshaw & Droge, 1986). It may thus be assumed that in everyday life, intentions are formed in connection with a planning process (Hayes-Roth & Hayes-Roth, 1979; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960; Sacerdoti, 1977; Wilenski, 1981) of which time allocation is the observed end result. In a similar vein, script 34
Tommy Garling et al.
theory (Abelson, 1981; Schank, 1982; Schank & Abelson, 1977) emphasizes the role of scripts or already executed plans as building blocks of plans under formation. This is certainly true of actions which are components of activities (Galambos & Rips, 1982; Nottenburg & Schoben, 1980; Reiser, Black, & Abelson, 1985) but may also to some extent be true of most everyday activities and their temporal organization. Even though several, rather complex factors, in addition to preferences, determine how much time people devote to everyday activities, it may still be asked what factors determine preferences for everyday activities. According to expectancy-value models in psychology (Feather, 1982; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), preferences for actions are determined by beliefs about their consequences and the value assigned to these consequences. To what extent this holds true for everyday activities, and what the likely consequences of such activities are perceived to be, were the primary questions which the present study tried to answer. Rokeach (1970, 1973) assumes that people while seeking life satisfaction strive to attain values, defined as psychological end-states, such as feelings of, for instance, security, freedom, and accomplishment. Although Rokeach may still be right in this basic assumption about the role of values, it appears as if he were partly wrong in his choice of values. This has been shown empirically by Montgomery (1984) and Montgomery, Drottz, Garling, Persson, and Waara (1985). A system for classifying psychological values was recently proposed by Montgomery and Johansson (1988). In addition to end-states or "terminal values," different desirable modes of conduct were identified by Rokeach (1973) as "instrumental values." These instrumental values, which actually consist of a number of personality traits (e.g., ambitious, helpful, independent), were assumed to be the means whereby the terminal values are attained. No further attempt was, however, made to elucidate the beliefs people may have about how the values are attained, although such beliefs are likely to underlie many decisions people make. Examples are decisions leading to consumption of goods, services, and energy. Conversely, one may ask what values people believe they will attain when making such decisions (Keeney & Raiffa, 1976). The hypothesis in the present study was that the attainment of values which are believed to lead to life satisfaction is perceived as an important 35
Preferences for Everyday Activities consequence of many everyday activities. If this is true, it should be possible to predict the preferences for everyday activities from knowledge about the important values that a person believes are attained by performing the activities. Analogous with the model proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), the following equation was proposed to relate preference for an activity i (Pj) to the evaluations (Ej) of the values j to which the activity is believed to lead (Pij, the instrumentality of an activity for attaining a given value, different from zero): (1)
.
P.I = ~> E. /LE. .lj}.} }
}
The validity of Equation 1 was investigated by means of a questionnaire distributed to a heterogeneous group of subjects. In this questionnaire, ratings expressed how important a number of everyday activities and values were believed to be for the attainment of life satisfaction as well as whether or not each activity contributed to the attainment of each value.
Method Questionnaire and Procedure Forty-seven everyday activities and 18 hypothesized perceived consequences, in the form of values, were presented in the questionnaire. The choice of everyday activities was based on classifications of activities employed in studies of time use (Chapin, 1974; Robinson, 1977; Szalai et aI., 1972). Hence, as Table 1 indicates, those activities included in the questionnaire related to work, education, housekeeping, personal needs, family, social interaction, community, culture, and leisure. In constructing these items, the aim was to be as specific as possible without overlooking any important activities. Furthermore, the intention was that the activities should represent meaningful cognitive units (Reiser et aI., 1985). Of the values, also shown in Table 1, 13 were direct translations of items used by Rokeach (1973). The remaining five were adapted after Montgomery (1984). 36
Tommy Garling et al. Table 1: The Everyday Activities and Their Hypothesized Perceived Value Consequences Everyday activities Work
Regular work l Working overtime
Education
Attend school Attend courses
Domestic work
House cleaning Food preparation Repair/upkeep Pet care Gardening Home decoration Domestic economy Shopping groceries Purchase of durables
Personal needs
Community
Personal hygiene Keep healthy Keep neat Physical exercise Make love Alcohol consumption Tobacco consumption Personal shopping
Going to church Club activities
Family activities
News media Home-based hobbies Practising sports Be in weekend cottage Be in countryside Outings Vacation Gambling Pastimes Relaxing
Child care Be with family Be with spouse Be with child Meals at home
Social interaction
Be with relatives Be with friends Party-organizing Attend parties Meals at restaurants Dancing
Culture
Sports events Cultural events Museums/exhibitions
Leisure
Values Recognition Freedom Togetherness Morals Excitement Influence Inner harmony Comfort Love Happiness Pleasure Self-respect Beauty Believing Security Accomplishment Wisdom Survival
Being respected, liked, or admired Independence and freedom of choice A feeling of belonging Living a moral life. Being honest A life full of variety. Satisfying curiosity Being able to influence other people To feel relieved from inner conflicts A comfortable life To love someone Contentedness and joy All kinds of pleasure. Enjoyment A feeling of self-esteem Enjoying beautiful things All kinds of belief in a just cause Not feeling worried or threatened A sense of having accomplished something Understanding important things. Life experience Not having to die young. Survival of the human species
1Italicized words are used as abbreviations in the following tables.
37
Preferences for Everyday Activities The questionnaire was distributed to groups of subjects seated in a classroom. The questionnaire, which was more extensive than reported here (Garling, Lindberg, Montgomery, & Waara, 1985), was completed by the subjects while being supervised by an experimenter. Each such session took about 2 hours. In addition to the questionnaire, the subjects had access to a list of all items. This list included explanations of the meanings of the values (see Table 1). Some of the activities were also exemplified by referring to more specific activities. Ratings were required in two parts of the questionnaire. After a onepage general description of the purpose of the study and some background questions, the first part requested the subjects to rate, on 13point scales, how important for life satisfaction they perceived the different values and activities to be (Ej and Pi, respectively). The order in which the items appeared on the pages of the questionnaire was random. In the following part of the questionnaire, Pij was measured. For each activity subjects indicated a plus sign for all those values which they believed to be attained by performing the particular activity. If an activity was believed to have the opposite consequence (i.e., to hinder the attainment of the value), a minus sign was indicated. The activities were presented on separate pages appearing in a random order.
Subjects The questionnaire was distributed to 120 students attending a college for adults located in VmeA which is an average-siLo ·d Swedish city with about 100,000 residents. The data from 8 subjects had to be discarded due to incompleteness and/or misinterpretations of the instructions. Of the 112 remaining subjects, 48 were women, 64 men. Their ages varied from 18 to 49 years (M = 28.3, s = 8.2); in the subsequent analysis subjects were divided into three categories, 18 to 24, 25 to 35, and 36 to 49. Sixty subjects were single, 52 had a family.
Results As shown in Table 2, the values were all given high importance ratings = 9.5), whereas the importance of the activities showed considerably larger variation (M = 6.7). (M
38
Tommy Garling et al. Table 2: Mean Ratings of Importance for Life Satisfaction Values
Everyday activities Hygiene Healthy Spouse Family Meals School Love Work Friends Child Media Vacation Economy Countryside Neat Child care Repair Groceries Exercise Hobbies Outings Pastimes Decoration Cleaning
10.6 10.0 9. 7 9. 3 9. 3 9.2 9. 1 9. 1 9.0 8.9 8.9 8.6 8.5 8.5 7.9 7.8 7. 7 7.6 7.4 7.4 7.4 6.9 6. 8 6.5
Food Cultural events Relatives Parties Restaurants Shopping Dancing Party-organizing Pet care Clubs Courses Gardening Museums Cottage Sports events Durables Overtime Relaxing Sports Alcohol Tobacco Gambling Church
6.4 6.4 6.4 6.2 5.9 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.5 5.4 5.3 5.2 5. 1 4.9 4.8 4.4 4.2 4. 1 3.9 3. 7 3. 3 3.1 2.4
Happiness Love Security Freedom Inner harmony Accomplishment Togetherness Survival Pleasure Self-respect Wisdom Excitement Morals Recognition Beauty Comfort Believing Influence
11. 2 10.8 10. 7 10.5 10. 5 10.1 10.0 9. 8 9. 7 9. 7 9.6 9.4 9.2 9. 1 8.4 7.9 7.3 7. I
Analyses of variance (ANOV As) were carried out separately for the activities and values (age x sex x marital status x items, with repeated measures on the last factor). No main effects confined to the betweensubject factors reached significance, but the means for individual items varied slightly across the different groups of subjects. Because of the small and unequal cell sizes resulting from the different combinations of the between-subject factors, only their two-way interactions with items were analyzed. For the values, the interactions of sex and of marital status with items were significant, F(17,1700) = 2.77 and 2.07, respectively, p
