Personal values are reliable cross-situational predictors of attitudes and behavior. Since the resurgence in research on values following the introduction of Schwartz’s theory of basic values, efforts were focused on identifying universal patterns in value–attitude relations. While some evidence for such universal patterns exists more recent studies point out, there is still considerable variation in value–attitude and value–behavior links across cultures and contexts. Extending the existing literature on potential moderators in this paper, we introduce the concept of value-instantiating beliefs. This study looks at subjective construal of the value relevance of specific behaviors as a proximal moderator of value–attitude and value–behavior relations. We argue that a belief that construes a behavior as a valid instantiation of a value is a prerequisite for the relationship between said value and the behavior. We also argue that such value-instantiating beliefs play a central role in determining the direction of the relationship. In a web-based survey experiment ( N = 1724) consisting of three trials, we presented participants with vignettes describing behavioral choices. In order to manipulate the value-instantiating beliefs, the behaviors were described either neutrally, as reinforcing the value, or as inhibiting the value. We then measured the value-instantiating beliefs, the attitude toward the behavior, and the intention to perform it. Instantiating beliefs strongly moderated the relationship between the personal values and the dependent variables in all three trials. Moreover, the direction of the relationship was determined by the instantiating beliefs. The results emphasize the plasticity of the value–behavior relation and the role of social construction in directing the motivational power of values toward concrete instantiating behaviors.

Estimating psychological constructs from natural language has the potential to expand the reach and applicability of personality science. Research on the Big Five has produced methods to reliably assess personality traits from text, but the development of comparable tools for personal values is still in the early stages. Based on the Schwartz theory of basic human values, we developed a dictionary for the automatic assessment of references to personal values in text. To refine and validate the dictionary, we used Facebook updates, blog posts, essays, and book chapters authored by over 180 000 individuals. The results show high reliability for the dictionary and a pattern of correlations between the value types in line with the circumplex structure. We found small to moderate (rs = .1–.4) but consistent correlations between dictionary scores and self‐reported scores for 7 out of 10 values. Correlations between the dictionary scores and age, gender, and political orientation of the author and scores for other established dictionaries mostly followed theoretical predictions. The Personal Values Dictionary can be used to assess references to value orientations in textual data, such as tweets, blog posts, or status updates, and will stimulate further research in methods to assess human basic values from text.

Stereotypes are ideological and justify the existing social structure. Although stereotypes persist, they can change when the context changes. Communism’s rise in Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century provides a natural experiment examining social-structural effects on social class stereotypes. Nine samples from postcommunist countries ( N = 2,241), compared with 38 capitalist countries ( N = 4,344), support the historical, sociocultural rootedness of stereotypes. More positive stereotypes of the working class appear in postcommunist countries, both compared with other social groups in the country and compared with working-class stereotypes in capitalist countries; postcommunist countries also show more negative stereotypes of the upper class. We further explore whether communism’s ideological legacy reflects how societies infer groups’ stereotypic competence and warmth from structural status and competition. Postcommunist societies show weaker status–competence relations and stronger (negative) competition–warmth relations; respectively, the lower meritocratic beliefs and higher priority of embeddedness as ideological legacies may shape these relationships.

This study contributes to the discussion on individual-level determinants of anti-immigrant prejudice by applying a multi-dimensional model of manifestations of national identity in Russia. This context is particularly interesting as anti-immigrant sentiments are widespread across all social strata and thus, socioeconomic indicators and political views are weak predictors of such sentiments. We use cross-sectional data from 1995, 2003, and 2013 ISSP National Identity module to assess the dynamics of three facets of national identity in Russia, namely nationalism, political patriotism, and cultural patriotism, and their relations with attitudes toward immigrants. We find nationalism, political patriotism, and anti-immigrant attitudes to increase over time. More importantly, our findings support the theoretical distinction between the facets of national identity: nationalism is linked to anti-immigrant attitudes, political patriotism is linked to more positive attitudes, and cultural patriotism is largely unrelated to attitudes toward immigrants. We show that these facets of national identity have much higher predictive power than sociodemographic indicators or political views. Our findings underscore the utility of a nuanced assessment of national identity in explaining attitudes toward immigrants in non-Western contexts.