ABSTRACT
Arnold Mitchell, director of the Stanford Research Institute‧s (SRI) Values and Lifestyle Program, published a book in 1983 titled The Nine American Lifestyles: Who We Are ampentity Where We Are Going. In his preface, he makes some interesting points (1983, New York: Macmillan, p. vii):
People‧s values and lifestyles say a good deal about where we are going, and they help explain such practical, diverse questions as: why we support some issues and oppose others; why some people are strong leaders and others weak; why some people are economically brilliant and others gifted artistically—and a few are both; why we trust some people and are suspicious of others; why some products attract us and others don’t; why revolutions occur.
By the term “values” we mean the entire constellation of a person‧s attitudes, beliefs, opinions, hopes, fears, prejudices, needs, desires, and aspirations that, taken together, govern how one behaves….We now have powerful evidence that the classification of an individual on the basis of a few dozen attitudes and demographics tells us a good deal about what to expect of that person in hundreds of other domains. Further, the approach often enables us to identify the decisive quality-of-life factor or factors in a person‧s life.
