Are individual value choices stable across different situationalcontexts? Traditional psychological theory provides a positive answerto this question. But, new research in political science concludesotherwise, causing many researchers to question whether values havethe pervasive influence on human behavior that has long been assumedto exist. In this dissertation, I test the stability and relevance ofvalue choices in several ways. First, I use an experimental designand new data funded by the TESS program to test whether value choicesare subject to priming effects. Second, I use a matching design anddata from three different time points over the past 16 years toexamine the distribution of value choices at the aggregate level.Third, I return to the TESS data and test the relationships betweenvalues and various forms of political behavior. In short, my results suggest, at the individual level, that\emph{some} values are stable and some are not. At the aggregatelevel, values ``move'' over time, but they do so predictably. Lastly,my results suggest that values have a rather heavy influence onevaluations of Barack Obama, but their influence on turnout and votechoice is negligible, at best. Taken as a whole, this dissertation speaks to a contentious body ofliterature that focuses on the theoretical status of values asfundamental influences on human behavior.
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