Subjective value fulfillment: A new way to study personal values and their consequences

We propose and test a theory of subjective value fulfillment. Participants from five samples reported their feelings of value fulfillment in general and in the context of specific identities: Student, Israeli, Arab, and Druze. Findings show that subjective value fulfillment has the same circular structure as value importance, but the two constructs differ extensively in their hierarchies. While hierarchies of value importance were similar across different identities in both the present study and prior reports, subjective value-fulfillment hierarchies differed in the present study, reflecting attributes of each identity. For most identities, subjective value fulfillment predicted well-being over and above value importance. The findings show that subjective value fulfillment can be a strong theoretical tool to study effects of social identities.