Brief report: Into the wild? How a film can change adolescents' values

Abstract

In adolescence, behavior and attitudes are constantly rethought and value priorities are established. Still, there is hardly any research addressing how values are shaped throughout this sensitive period. We employed an experimental design, testing whether adolescents' values can be influenced by exposure to a film. In our study, 154 German adolescents (80 females, ages 13-15) were randomly assigned to an experimental group that watched excerpts from the film "Into the wild" or to a control group. Value change was assessed in a pre-post-test design with a one-week interval. As hypothesized, values changed in the direction of those displayed by the film's protagonist: Universalism values increased significantly and conformity values decreased significantly as compared to the control group. Our findings suggest that single exposure to a film may initiate value change, indicating that not only major live events, but also everyday experiences significantly affect adolescents' values.

Introduction to the Special Section Value Development from Middle Childhood to Early Adulthood—New Insights from Longitudinal and Genetically Informed Research

“…The same may be true for self‐transcendence vs. self‐enhancement. This pattern was identified for change across situations (e.g., Arieli et al, ; Döring & Hillbrink, ; Maio et al, ; Verkasalo et al, ) and over time (e.g., Cieciuch et al, ; Vecchione et al, , in this special Quartet). We are curious to see if future evidence will confirm this pattern.…”

“…Experimental evidence, mainly with adults (e.g., Maio, Pakizeh, Cheung, & Rees, ), but recently also with adolescents and children shows that small value change can be triggered through manipulation of situational variables. For example, a prosocial intervention (including self‐persuasion, consistency maintenance and priming) increased adults’ benevolence values (Arieli, Grant, & Sagiv, ), and watching an adventurous movie increased the importance of adolescents’ stimulation values (Döring & Hillbrink, ). Importantly, these changes in value priorities occurred alongside Schwartz's () model of motivational compatibilities and incompatibilities.…”

What Can We Learn About Aggression From What Adolescents Consider Important in Life? The Contribution of Values Theory to Aggression Research

“…This mechanism also tends to preserve itself by contributing to self‐consistency (Bardi & Goodwin, ; Rokeach, ). The role of values in promoting behaviors is supported by experimental studies of adults and adolescents (Döring & Hillbrink, ; Maio, Pakizeh, Cheung, & Rees, ) and longitudinal studies of adolescents (Vecchione, Döring, Alessandri, Marsicano, & Bardi, ).…”

Changing Personal Values through Value-Manipulation Tasks: A Systematic Literature Review Based on Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values

“…Although in the case of the reviewed experiments the change is due to a manipulation, the value change could be interpreted as a functional response to the external demand. Moreover, considering Bain et al's [78], Döring and Hillbrink's [67] and Maio et al's [13] experiments, the manipulation tasks elicited an effect also on the opposite values to the target ones, coherently with the circumplex-structure of values theorised by Schwartz [10,16,20]. However, except for two studies [66,79], we cannot establish if changes were short-or long-term.…”