A look at the culture through people's diverse
attitudes, needs, wants, beliefs, and demographics
History is not the only way to try to probe the roots of our culture's vision. The following excerpt (reprinted with permission) from a recent report by the VALS Group at SRI International (Menlo Park, CA 94025) suggests some of the current diversity within our culture. A more extensive discussion of the VALS research is in The Nine American Lifestyles, by Arnold Mitchell, published by Macmillian.
VALS - short for values and lifestyles - is a way of viewing people on the basis of their attitudes, needs, wants, beliefs, and demographics. The VALS program was created by SRI International in 1978 in an attempt to "put people" into the thinking of those of us trying to understand the trends of our times - in the marketplace, economically, politically, sociologically, and humanly. The approach is holistic, drawing on insight and many sources of data to develop a comprehensive framework for characterizing the ways of life of Americans. Conceptually, VALS owes a major debt to the findings of developmental psychology. Our initial speculations have now been extensively confirmed, honed, and extended in field research. The system is currently being applied in many areas of business and is evoking interest in circles as diverse as sociology, politics, law, education, and medicine.
A basic tool of the VALS program is the VALS typology. This typology is divided into four major categories, with a total of nine lifestyles. These are:
Need-Driven
-Survivor lifestyle
-Sustainer lifestyle
Outer-Directed
-Belonger lifestyle
-Emulator lifestyle
-Achiever lifestyle
Inner-Directed
-I-Am-Me lifestyle
-Experiential lifestyle
-Societally Conscious lifestyle
Combined Outer- and Inner-Directed
-Integrated lifestyle
It should be understood from the start that these lifestyle categories are not fixed and immutable. Many people grow from one level to another as children, as adolescents, and as adults. Some very few may start at the bottom and reach the top within a lifetime, but far more common is movement of a level or two.
The VALS typology is hierarchical. The prime development thrust is from Need-Driven through Outer- Directed and Inner-Directed phases to a joining of Outer- and Inner-Direction. These major transitions are seen as crucial way-posts in the movement of an individual (or a society) from immaturity to full maturity. Three of the four major developmental categories are subdivided into lifestyle phases representing stages of advancement within the main category.
By "maturity," we specifically mean psychological maturity. Very generally, psychological maturation is marked by a progression from partial toward full realization of one's potential. It involves a steady widening of perspectives and concerns and a steady deepening of the inner reference points consulted in making important decisions. Thus, the role of habit and "stock answers" abates as a person matures, and the person becomes increasingly more complex and self-expressive in a values sense.
This hierarchy should be thought of as a nested model, with each stage "burying," as it were, previous stages. This means that an individual's totality - like the layers of an onion - consists of inner "spheres" of values relating to stages of development that often date back to childhood or adolescence. Hence, the more developed a person is, the more complex his or her value structure and the more diverse the range of value-based reactions. This is why highly developed people often identify with many - even all - of the VALS levels: They are all of them!
In the paragraphs that follow, we have tried to describe the psychological essence of each segment of the typology and, in so doing, to provide a feeling for the widening concerns and multiplying values of people as they move through the typology.
Read further:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC03/SRIVALS.htm
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