Do Values Matter?An Analysis of Advance Directives for Medical Treatment

One of the oldest disputes in social science divides objectivists and subjectivists. Whereas subjectivists recognize the causal importance of internal states, such as individual values, objectivists forswear them in favour of exclusively external causes, such as social structural constraints. Their reluctance to countenance internal states stems in large part from the perception that effective measures of values and other internal states are extremely difficult to find. Lacking such measures, there is no means of disentangling subjective and objective factors in behavioural explanations. This paper presents a framework employing the factorial survey method that yields rigorous measures of individual values and that enables assessment of the operation of both objective and subjective factors in human behaviour. As test site for the new framework, we examine the formulation of advance directives for medical treatment (living wills) among a sample of healthy elderly people. We construct hypothetical scenarios depicting a life-threatening situation and ask respondents to indicate their desire for medical intervention given differing circumstances: the intervention's chance of success, various levels of chronic pain, limitation of physical function, burden to family and friends, and the pecuniary cost of the prospective treatment. Analysing the data with a variety of statistical tools, we obtain measures of four values and unbiased estimates of their effects on treatment decisions, as well as estimates of the effects of objective factors on both values and treatment decisions

[1]  Ann Swidler.  Cultural Power and Social Movements , 2000 .

[2]  Avner Ben-Ner,et al.  Economics, Values, and Organization , 1998 .

[3]  Paul DiMaggio.  Culture and cognition , 1997 .

[4]  Gary S. Becker,et al.  Accounting for Tastes , 1997 .

[5]  K. Marx,et al.  Marx: Later Political Writings: ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , 1996 .

[6]  Robert K. Merton,et al.  The Thomas Theorem and The Matthew Effect , 1995 .

[7]  M. Marini,et al.  Gender and values , 1995 .

[8]  T. Kuran.  The Inevitability of Future Revolutionary Surprises , 1995, American Journal of Sociology.

[9]  Jack Martin,et al.  The Moral Dimension , 1995 .

[10]  S. Rosenberg.  Against Neoclassical Political Economy: A Political Psychological Critique , 1995 .

[11]  Jan W. van Deth,et al.  The Concept of Values , 1995 .

[12]  Michael Hechter,et al.  The Role of Values in Rational Choice Theory , 1994 .

[13]  Henry J. Aaron,et al.  Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Public Policy, Values, and Consciousness , 1994 .

[14]  Mary Jo Neitz,et al.  Culture: Sociological Perspectives , 1993 .

[15]  S. Chaiken,et al.  The psychology of attitudes. , 1993 .

[16]  M. Zanna,et al.  Attitudes and Attitude Change , 1993 .

[17]  M. Traugott,et al.  LITTLE WHITE LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MODELS CORRELATED RESPONSE ERRORS IN A PANEL STUDY OF VOTING , 1992 .

[18]  Anthony S. Bryk,et al.  Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods , 1992 .

[19]  Michael Hechter,et al.  Should Values Be Written out of the Social Scientist's Lexicon? , 1992 .

[20]  W. Sewell.  A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation , 1989, American Journal of Sociology.

[21]  Robert E. Lane,et al.  The market experience , 1996 .

[22]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  Value elicitation: Is there anything in there? , 1991 .

[23]  Ita G. G. Kreft,et al.  The Analysis of Factorial Surveys , 1991 .

[24]  J. Coleman.  Foundations of Social Theory , 1990 .

[25]  A. Buchanan,et al.  Deciding for others. , 1990, The Milbank quarterly.

[26]  Jon Elster,et al.  The Cement Of Society , 1991 .

[27]  N. Eisenberg,et al.  Gender differences in empathy and prosocial moral reasoning: Empirical investigations. , 1989 .

[28]  G. Jasso.  Whom shall we welcome? Elite judgments of the criteria for the selection of immigrants. , 1988 .

[29]  A. Tversky,et al.  Contingent weighting in judgment and choice , 1988 .

[30]  Robert Wuthnow,et al.  New Directions in the Study of Culture , 1988 .

[31]  Ann Swidler.  CULTURE IN ACTION: SYMBOLS AND STRATEGIES* , 1986 .

[32]  J. Coleman,et al.  Psychological Structure and Social Structure in Economic Models , 1986 .

[33]  G. Judge,et al.  The Theory and Practice of Econometrics , 1981 .

[34]  R. Berk,et al.  Varieties of Normative Consensus , 1985 .

[35]  A. Kellerman,et al.  The Constitution of Society : Outline of the Theory of Structuration , 2015 .

[36]  H. White.  Asymptotic theory for econometricians , 1985 .

[37]  Barbara Entwisle,et al.  Contextual analysis through the multilevel linear model. , 1983 .

[38]  C. Gilligan.  In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982. , 1982 .

[39]  James A. Davis,et al.  Achievement Variables and Class Cultures: Family, Schooling, Job, and Forty-Nine Dependent Variables in the Cumulative GSS. , 1982 .

[40]  H. White.  A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity , 1980 .

[41]  George J. Stigler,et al.  De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum , 2010 .

[42]  P. Blau.  Inequality and Heterogeneity: A Primitive Theory of Social Structure , 1978 .

[43]  Guillermina Jasso,et al.  Measuring household social standing , 1974 .

[44]  R. Merton.  The Normative Structure of Science , 1973 .

[45]  F. Nye,et al.  Class And Conformity , 1969 .

[46]  P. J. Huber.  The behavior of maximum likelihood estimates under nonstandard conditions , 1967 .