Cooperation and Competition are Affected by Personal Values, but not by Mortality Salience or Extinction due to Environmental Pollution

dc.contributor.advisorEtherton, Joseph
dc.contributor.authorMangino Sirvent, Derek
dc.contributor.committeeMemberTownsend, Christi
dc.contributor.committeeMemberOsborne, Randall
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-20T18:00:46Z
dc.date.available2022-07-20T18:00:46Z
dc.date.issued2022-08
dc.description.abstractMany environmental scientists are predicting that the environmental pollution in the Anthropocene will lead to negative consequences, so it is becoming increasingly urgent to address human behaviors that affect Planet Earth. Among factors that likely contribute to delayed climate change mitigation efforts are psychological factors, including the lack of cooperation in addressing the cause, and the competition for diminishing resources. Personal values of self-transcendence (pro-social) and self-enhancement (pro-self) seem to be related to attitudes and behaviors of cooperation and competition. Furthermore, when faced with threatening negative scenarios, self-enhancing competitive values and attitudes may increase, although upon contemplating one’s own mortality, pro-social cooperative values and attitudes may increase. Examining the interactions between personal values and effects of perceived negative scenarios may improve our understanding of barriers to effective responses to climate change. In the current experiment, after measuring participants’ self-enhancement and self-transcendence values with Stern’s Brief Inventory of Values, participants wrote about dental pain, their own death, or extinction of life on Earth, to prime them into one of these negative scenarios. Following a series of distracting tasks, participants’ levels of cooperation and competition were measured using the Cooperation and Competition Personality Scale (CCPS) and a commons dilemma task. Results indicated that the hypotheses regarding the negative scenarios were not supported because the negative primes seemed to have no effect on the outcome variables. However, there was support for the predicted relationships between self-transcendence and cooperation and between self-enhancement and competition. These results suggest that personal values are more predictive of individual’s behaviors than surrounding negative scenarios, therefore it may be more important to focus environmental communication research on individuals and their values than on presenting the facts to the public.
dc.description.departmentPsychology
dc.formatText
dc.format.extent62 pages
dc.format.medium1 file (.pdf)
dc.identifier.citationMangino Sirvent, D. (2022). <i>Cooperation and competition are affected by personal values, but not by mortality salience or extinction due to environmental pollution</i> (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10877/15986
dc.language.isoen
dc.subjectMortality salience
dc.subjectTerror Management Theory
dc.subjectCooperation
dc.subjectCompetition
dc.subjectBIV
dc.subjectCCPS
dc.subjectBrief inventory of values
dc.subjectEnvironmental communications
dc.subjectEnvironmental pollution
dc.subjectClimate change
dc.titleCooperation and Competition are Affected by Personal Values, but not by Mortality Salience or Extinction due to Environmental Pollution
dc.typeThesis
thesis.degree.departmentPsychology
thesis.degree.disciplinePsychological Research
thesis.degree.grantorTexas State University
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts

Files

Original bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
MANGINOSIRVENT-THESIS-2022.pdf
Size:
480.69 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format

License bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
2.97 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description: