Perceived Value Similarity With Important Others: Well-Being Implications for Emerging Adults

Abstract

Emerging adults establish, question, and reestablish their values within the most diverse social contexts. Every social context privileges expressing certain values and/or punishes expressing conflicting ones. This makes a similarity between one’s own values and those preferred in one’s life contexts psychologically desirable (person–environment fit). This study focuses on the similarity of individuals’ values with the perceived values of important others from five immediate social contexts, namely, family, friends, intimate partner, study group, and work group, and their relationship with life satisfaction. The sample consisted of emerging adults from Serbia interacting with the five mentioned contexts (N = 479). A mobile app with a game-like survey was launched to collect the data. The data indicated a positive association between life satisfaction and perceived value similarity with one’s family and with one’s intimate partner. Value similarity with friends and study and work colleagues emerged as insignificant. Identity centrality and the general importance of the immediate social contexts were studied as possible moderators. Identity centrality showed no moderation effect, whereas general importance of the intimate partner did: High importance of the intimate partner decreased the positive effect of value similarity on well-being.