If I have faith, why do I need values?

Yesterday I wrote about how we all seek to be part of something beyond ourselves.  That something may be a church or synagogue or mosque or other religious group.  I have been putting off writing about faith or religion because it is a topic where it is really easy to offend people.  Atheists are wary that others are suggesting that they are that they are not good people because they are not religious and believers are wary that their faith may be under attack.  I will try to do neither of those things.  But if we are going to talk about values, it is important consider faith because religious beliefs are where many people locate the source of their values.

Researchers have looked at the question of how strength of faith and life purpose relate to our sense of wellness (Byron & Miller-Perrin, 2009).  The participants in this study were students at a Christian liberal arts university in California.  They were surveyed about their life purpose (pursuit of meaningful life goals), about their wellness (psychological, emotional, social, physical, spiritual, and intellectual), and about the strength of their religious faith.  The researchers found that life purpose fully mediated the relationship between faith and well-being.  In everyday language, that means that the impact of faith on well-being was explained having a life purpose.  Of course this was a sample of Christian students and these results might not hold for everyone.  But they do suggest, that one of the contributions that that religious faith makes to the quality of our lives is to foster a sense of life purpose.  

Reference

Byron, K. & Miller-Perrin, C. (2009) The value of life purpose: Purpose as a mediator of faith and well-being, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4:1, 64-70, DOI: 10.1080/17439760802357867

I am taking better aim at my values. Does it matter if I hit the target?

Yesterday I told you that it might be less important what values you find important than what you do about your values.  I also suggested that you set some goals for yourself that are in line with your values (Feb. 10th).  There is a wealth of information and research on how taking aim with goals helps you reach your targets. Because values are a personally-meaningful way of behaving (Feb. 3rd), then living congruently with values should help you live better.

Quite a bit of the research that psychologists have conducted about living according to values has been done with people who are coping with physical problems.  One study looked at patients’ distress living with cancer and found that when patients lived according to their values they experienced less cancer-related distress and an improved sense of well-being (Ciarrochi et al., 2010). A study of 140 adults with chronic pain found that success in living according to values predicted better functioning, no matter how high the level of pain (McCracken & Yang, 2006).  A study of patients living with epilepsy found that management of seizures, quality of life, and well-being outcomes were impacted by attaining values.  With people who do not have health challenges, researchers found that using their VIA strengths was related to goal progress and then to well-being on an ongoing basis (Linley et al., 2010). This suggests that healthy or not, taking aim at your values and acting in a way that you think is meaningful will contribute to a sense of well-being in your life.  If you haven’t had a chance yet to set some goals related to your values, maybe today is a good day.

References

Ciarrochi, J., Fisher, D., & Lane, L. (2011). The link between value motives, value success, and well-being among people diagnosed with cancer. Psycho-Oncology, 20, 1184-1192. doi:10.1002/pon.1832

McCracken LM, Yang S (2006). The role of values in a contextual cognitive-behavioral approach to chronic pain. Pain, 123, 137-145. DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2006.02.021

Linley, P.A., Nieslon, K.M., Gillett, R., & Bas-Diener, R. (2010). Using signature strengths in pursuit of goals: Effects on goal profess, need satisfaction, and well-being and implications for coaching psychologists. iInternational Coaching Psychology Review, 5, 1-11.

Lundgren T., Dahl J., Hayes S.C. (2008). Evaluation of mediators of change in the treatment of epilepsy with acceptance and commitment therapy. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31, 225-235.

What will values do for me?

Values…."So what? Who cares?" Why bother clarifying what my values are or trying to live more congruently with them?  I realize now that I probably should have started with this at the beginning of February - but better late than never.  I will

actually break the so what question down into two questions because psychologists have quite a lot to say about values and well-being.  First we will talk about which values allow us to live better.  On February 7th, I talked about the fact that materialistic values don’t really make us happy.  But which values do lead to happiness and health?  The second question is about how we act on our values.  Does behaving according to our values matter in terms of well-being?

I will get to the second question tomorrow.  

For today I am going to focus on which values allow us to live better.  The study that I will talk about used the VIA measure of character strengths to look at this question.  Peterson and his colleagues (2007) surveyed more than 12,000 people in the US and 445 in Switzerland and asked about their VIA strengths and life satisfaction.  In both countries, people reported that love, hope, curiosity, and zest were linked to life satisfaction.  In addition, gratitude was related to satisfaction in Americans and perseverance to satisfaction among the Swiss.  

If you took the VIA test and you found that one of your important signature strengths was love, hope, curiosity, gratitude or (perseverance if you are Swiss), then you are probably pretty happy right now.  If you didn’t yet take the test, you still can at https://www.viacharacter.org/www/The-Survey.  But if you took it and your signature strengths are different than the ones named above, please don’t despair.  First, this is a single study and we should never take one piece of research as the final answer.  But more than that, tomorrow I will talk about values-behaviour congruence - how what you do may be more important than which value you hold.  We’ll talk. 

Reference

Peterson, C., Ruch, W., Beermann, U., Park, N., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2007). Strengths of character, orientations to happiness, and life satisfaction. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 149-156. doi:10.1080/17439760701228938

How do my values color what I see?

So far, I have focused mostly on values as the basis for action – how I decide what to do.  But values are more than that.  They are also the lens through which I see the world, coloring my view.   If justice is an important value to me, when I read news reports, the treatment mistreatment of a juvenile offender by the police will probably be more relevant to me than news of the construction of a new highway.  We could call this detecting meaning because I detect what is important to me (the justice issue) in the news broadcast.

Researchers Laura King and Joshua Hicks (2009) did a series of studies in which they investigated meaning detection and another process that they called constructing meaning.  Constructing meaning happens when I try to see the world in my normal way and it doesn’t work so I construct a new way of seeing it.  In other words, if my regular lenses don’t make things clear, I get new glasses.  King and Hicks looked at meaning detection and construction in major positive and negative events.  In one study, they found that people only constructed meaning (new glasses) when major events were negative; if they were positive they detected meaning (regular glasses).  In another study, some participants were asked to write about their most important positive experience and others about their most important negative experience.  Then they were asked it the experience “fit” with their view of the world or if they “struggled” to make sense of it.  All participants were also asked if the event was very meaningful to them. The researchers found that detected meaning was particularly associated with the meaningfulness of positive events and constructed meaning was associated the meaningfulness of negative events. So if a good thing happens to me, I can use my regular glasses to see it.  And if it is a big thing, that will feel meaningful.  If I value fairness and I get a big promotion, it will tend to fit with my sense that the world is fair and I will find it important.  But if I get fired and my value is fairness, I may struggle to make sense of it, finding it unfair.   Perhaps I will only be able to find the meaning it when I get new glasses. 

As we work to articulate and live according to our values, negative experiences are an opportunity to try on a new way of seeing things.  In a recent study conducted in our own research group (Fitzpatrick et al., 2016), we offered a workshop on values clarification and congruence to a group of university employees and interviewed them about their experiences after it was over.   All of the participants indicated that they signed up for the workshop in the context of a challenging issue they were struggling with in their lives.  We had not thought of it that way, but I guess we were helping fit them with new glasses.

References

Fitzpatrick, M., Henson, A., Grumet, R., Poolokasingham, G., Foa, C., Comeau, T., & Predergast, C.  (2016). Challenge, focus, inspiration and support: Processes of values clarification and congruence. Journal of Contextual and Behavioral Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2016.02.001  

King, L. A., & Hicks, J. A. (2009). Detecting and constructing meaning in life events. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(5), 317-330. doi:10.1080/17439760902992316

I never have enough time for the things that are important. How do I make time for values?

Yesterday, I mentioned that even if our values are consistent, we will need to make choices among the actions needed to make them real.  This is the place where many of us get into trouble - juggling all of the activities that compete for our time and energy.  If you remember how we defined values (February 3^rd post), we said that values are bigger than a particular situation.  For example if I value security, I will want stability in my marriage, I will value making time to keep up my friendships, I will want to get to the gym to keep my body healthy, have solid relationships with my colleagues and my boss, and try to keep my children safe and get them to school on time.  You can see how a single value can lead to a multitude of different priorities as it crosses from one area of life into another.  The different life domains are the place where a single value can come into conflict with itself.  

Psychologists have been studying one aspect of this issue extensively for 50 years looking at work-family balance.  However all of this research has had little impact on the problem.  Work-family conflict is at an all-time high.  To make you feel better if you have a hard time juggling these priorities, you can read an analysis of the implications of workplace devotion for men and women in Williams, Berdahl and Vancello (2016).

To get a sense of how you may need to juggle values-based actions, I have provided a table below that you can use as a model.   Begin by selecting a value that is important to you (see February 4^th post for how to do this).  Then select some domains (Hayes, 2005) from the left-hand column where you want to act on that value.  Finally, think of one specific thing you can do readily (1-day), in the short-term (1-week), and in the longer term (1-year) to make this value come to life. This last step will take a bit of thinking so put this on your phone, or print it and put it the edge of your desk or your kitchen counter and fill it in gradually.  We will take some time in the coming days to address barriers to actually doing these things.  For the moment, give yourself credit for taking the time to think this through.  

Your value:
	1-day action	1-week action	1-year action
Partner/relationship
Parenting
Family
Friends
Career/work
Education/personal growth
Recreation/leisure
Spirituality
Citizenship
Health/physical well being

References

Hayes, S.C. (2005). Get out of you mind and into your life:  The new Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  Oakland, CA: New Harbinger. 

Williams, J.D., Berdahl, J.L., & Vancello, J.A. (2016).  Beyond work-life “integration.”  Annual Review of Psychology, 67, 515-539. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033710