Values and how we change them

Everybody talks about values. Politicians talk about "family values", ministers about "religious values". Most of us have a general idea that our "values" represent our preferred choices, or the choices preferred by our culture or religion. When a choice arises we expect to act according to the relevant value.

We know that there are times when we make the "wrong" choice, in the sense that we act not according to our professed value, but according to some other priority or need. The man who steals money from his employer may know that he is "doing wrong" in spite of his professed belief that "theft is always wrong". His behavioral value is not consistent with his professed verbal values. In his mind, however, he may feel that he "has a right" to steal from the employer because he feels "exploited". So we can see that our values can exist in the form of behavioral choices as well as in our thoughts and words, and that the three may not be the same.

Values can exist in three forms: cognitive, verbal and behavioral. We can think of making a particular kind of choice (cognitive value); we can tell one another what our values are or should be (verbal values); our actual choices reveal behavioral values.

Many times we are surprised by the actual choices that we make when the time comes. They may not have been the choices we thought we would make. They may not have been the choices we told others we would make. Our values on the same topic often conflict with one another. We notice another form of values conflict when we discover that one belief (or cognitive value) clashes with another value. For instance, a Christian might believe in love and respect for others, and then is placed in a situation where he/she has to make a choice about hurting others (such as in battle). Someone enjoying a steak dinner might suddenly recall how cows are treated and find it difficult to finish the meal.

It's interesting that we can live with conflicting values for years without even noticing that they conflict until something causes us to pay attention. Then we recognize that we have to decide which value has priority. Growing up seems to me largely to be a process of examining and re-examing our values and rearranging their priorites so that they are more consistent.

When we assign a new priority to a value, we do so on the cognitive level. We decide mentally that in the future we will behave differently when the opportunity arises. Many times we actually do what we have planned. We can tell a friend what our new values are. So it seems clear that cognitive value changes can change behavioral and verbal values.

During the Korean war and after a number of studies demonstrated that when behavioral changes are forced, even at gunpoint, the cognitive values shifted gradually in the same direction. Men forced to make speeches favoring communism at gunpoint were found later to have shifted their beliefs (cognitive values) in the direction of the speeches they had been forced to make. When buying a car after much internal (and external) debate about the virtues of one model over another, once the behavioral choice to buy a particular car is made our values immediately change. Suddenly we see all the good reasons for buying this car and the negative ones become unimportant. We tell our friends what a good idea it was. We think we have made an excellent choice. Festinger called this resolution of cognitive conflict "cognitive dissonance", and this theory has long demonstrated that behavioral values and choices modify verbal and cognitive ones.

How we behave can change our values. We can't lie without lowering our value of honesty. We can't steal without changing in the direction of believing that theft is "not so bad". Not only do our values determine our choices, but our choices determine our values. We change to fit the choices that we actually make. When we choose work over family time or intimacy, we begin shifting to actually value work more than family time or intimacy. When we choose to spend time in an online relationship instead of with a friend or intimate companion, we change all our values in the corresponding direction.

Every choice changes our values. Even purely cognitive choices change the other value systems. Every choice counts. Every behavior reinforces the value associated with it. Every action or inaction has psychological consequences. What we do becomes who we are.