You are right. In day-to-day usage, the word value has different meanings. It can describe things that we prize - she values her independence - or things
that have worth to me - I value my
collection of antique spoons. The
word value is also used to describe something that people generally agree is
important and has merit such as the value
of a good friend. When I write about values here, what I am
writing about is the idea of that a value is a personal quality of being, a way of behaving in the world that is
based on something we find personally important.
I stressed two concepts in the last
sentence: behaving or action and personal choice. According to this way of thinking about
values, they are the guidelines for how I act.
If for example, I say that act with integrity. That might mean being honest in my business
dealings, or being fair with my students, or being trustworthy with my family
and friends. In other words, integrity is
a quality that transcends the specifics of a situation and it guides my behaviour
in different ways (e.g., honesty, trustworthiness, fairness). These ideas are central to how psychologists
who study values have defined them (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1994). But values also need to be personal – we need
to own them. So I will behave with integrity not just because my boss is watching, or my
students will be impressed, or my father said this is the right way to be, but
because this is who I am and who I aspire to be. When I look out at the world, my
values guide how I see it.
Psychologists who
practice psychotherapy using Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy (ACT: https://contextualscience.org/https://contextualscience.org/) regularly work with
values in therapy sessions. The ACT
framework uses this idea of values as desired qualities of being. It also distinguishes values from goals. That is because goals can be achieved but a
value is always a work in progress. So, to
go back to the example of the value to
live with integrity, I can keep a promise that I made or tell a difficult
truth and those are actions in support of my values. But doing them does not mean that I have
“achieved” integrity. The value remains
as a constant - bigger than a single instance or even a week or a decade of
instances.
References
Rokeach, M. (1973). The
nature of human values. New York: Free Press.
Schwartz, S. H. (1994). Are there
universal aspects in the structure and contents of human values? Journal of
Social Issues, 50(4),
19-45. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1994.tb01196.x
What about values as a means of interaction? A method or a process of communication and behaviours that lead to a goal?
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