Article About Life Values

The Importance of Values

When we think of our values we think of what is important to us in life.  Each of us holds numerous values (eg, achievement, security, benevolence) with varying degrees of importance.  A particular value may be very important to one person but unimportant to another.

Belief

Value are beliefs.  It is linked inextricably to affect.  When values are activated, they become infused with feeling.  People for whom independence is an important value become aroused if their independence is threatened, despair when thy are helpless to protect it, and happy when they can enjoy it.

Goals

Values refer to desirable goals that motivate action, people for whom social order, justice and helpfulness are important values are motivated to pursue these goals.

Specificity

Values transcend specific actions and situations.  Obedience and honesty, for example, are values that many be relevant at work or in school, in sports, business and politics, with family, friends or strangers.  The feature distinguishes values from narrower concepts like norms and attitudes that usually refer to specific actions, objects or situations.

Standard

Values serve as standards or criteria.  Values guide that selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people and events.  People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values.  But the impact of values in everyday decisions is rarely conscious.  Values enter awareness when the actions or judgment once is considering have conflicting implications for different values one cherishes.

Priority

Values are ordered by importance related to one another.  People’s values form an ordered system of value priorities that characterize them as individuals.  Do they attribute more importance to achievement or justice, to novelty or tradition ?  This hierarchical feature
also distinguishes values from norms and attributes.

Multiplicity

The relative importance of multiple values guides action.  Any attitude or behavior typically has implications for more than one value.  For example, attending church might express and promote tradition, conformity and security values at the expense of hedonism and stimulation values.  The trade off among relevant, competing values is a what guides attitudes and behaviors.  Values contribute to action to the extent that they are relevant in the context (hence likely to be activated) and important to the actor.